Outdoor Cooking '09

[Kitsune]

Anyone here done a whole pig roast over a fire pit before? Or cooking technique where you bury the food with hot coals?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Anyone here done a whole pig roast over a fire pit before? Or cooking technique where you bury the food with hot coals?

My friend did it. Unfortunately, the timing was off and it was done a few hours late. I don't eat pork so I was happy with the turkey and beef.

The smell was a little odd. It smelled like something or someone was burning more than something was cooking.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Anyone here done a whole pig roast over a fire pit before? Or cooking technique where you bury the food with hot coals?

I've done both before. With regard to the pig, are you talking about a spit roast? If so, over here, you can often hire the spit roasters or if you're handy you can build one. After that it's just a matter of building your fire pit away from wind, or using some sheet iron (as an example) to protect your heat source. BBQ beads are the best, but you can use wood too. It's really up to you and what flavour you want. They take a long time to cook that way though. Specially if you're doing a full sized porker.

My ex was Samoan, so we had quite a lot of Oumu's which is the traditional ground cooking technique for Samoan culture. You start with your bed of coals, and as they're burning down, you put a layer of river rocks over the top. Once all the flames are gone from your heat source, you can then place your food on the hot rocks. A whole pig is easy to do this way. You just sit it on the rocks. I recommend cleaning the rocks if they're dirty of course. you should then push the outter rocks in around, and then cover with banana leaves. Lots of them. If you don't have access to banana leaves, you can use dampened paper. Newspaper is fine if you don't mind the idea of the ink. You can also put your veges in with the pork that way too. All in all, a whole carcass will only take a couple of hours to cook this way, but there's a lot more time in preparation, so it probably works out the same either way the first time. Once you've already got your stash of rocks etc, it's a much quicker process in future.

I like the Samoan style better than the Maori underground cooking where the food is covered with earth. The taste is much different.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Anyone here done a whole pig roast over a fire pit before? Or cooking technique where you bury the food with hot coals?

Yep, we did it. Step by step photographic instructions here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AnesMerc/PigRoast#

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Yep, we did it. Step by step photographic instructions here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AnesMerc/PigRoast#

Looks incredibly labor intensive, but I bet it was worth it! We're looking to attend some BBQs this summer that friends are holding and there has been the threat of whole pig -- something I don't think we can pass up. Should be quite awesome.

Huge shindigs like that make me really want a back yard.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Looks incredibly labor intensive, but I bet it was worth it! We're looking to attend some BBQs this summer that friends are holding and there has been the threat of whole pig -- something I don't think we can pass up. Should be quite awesome.

Huge shindigs like that make me really want a back yard.

It took two days, one day of inital prep and a second half day of completely cooking, from 8 am to about 7pm. But with a group and a keg of beer, it was a lot of fun and something I would do again if I could get a crowd big enough to make it worth while.