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Pig or Hog -- SAME THING!
Raúl Musibay: Roasting a pig (or hog as they say in the south) is the traditional way to celebrate Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve.
Jorge Castillo: The Three Guys from Miami have been roasting hogs in the United States for more than 25 years.
Glenn Lindgren: Raúl is the true master of the pig roast! He learned the art of roasting hogs from his father and father-in-law in Cuba.
Raúl Musibay: This is the way we have been roasting pigs in Cuba for generations!
The Three Guys From Miami selecting a fat Iowa pig "on the hoof" in 1984. And no, we didn't select one of these sows.
Glenn Lindgren: Finding a suitable pig or hog is surprisingly easy.
Jorge Castillo: You'd be amazed at how many hogs are hiding in our midst.
Glenn Lindgren: Like at your local butcher. We're talking about an independent butcher where they actually cut the meat and package it for sale.
Raúl Musibay: The average butcher has had this request before, so don't be shy. Step up to the counter!
Glenn Lindgren: Buying a pig is one of the few times in life when you don't have to worry about color, model, or brand name.
Jorge Castillo: You just need to have a pretty good idea of what size hog you want.
Raúl Musibay: The best pigs are about 60-120 pounds, cleaned and prepared for cooking -- what they call the butchered weight.
Glenn Lindgren: We've also cooked smaller pigs and they can be quite tasty.
Jorge Castillo: Any hog larger than 140 pounds is a disaster in the making! It's just too big to cook and handle properly. Try flipping a 140 pound hog and you'll know what we're talking about.
Glenn Lindgren: An 80-pound pig easily feeds 50 to 60 people. However, we love to have plenty of leftovers, so we always make way too much.
Jorge Castillo: Another good place to find a hog is from someone who raises them, namely your local neighborhood farmer.
Raúl Musibay: If you live near a farming area, contact the local agriculture agency to see which farmers sell hogs directly to the public.
Jorge Castillo: Then get in touch with one of the farmers on the list and tell him (or her) that you need q whole hog. Many farmers can butcher the meat themselves or they may have an arrangement with a butcher to do so.
Raúl Musibay: No farms near you? Many grocery stores can also arrange to deliver a whole pig to you. Talk to the person in charge of the meat department and see what they say.
Glenn Lindgren: Have the farmer or butcher clean the hog.
Jorge Castillo: And we're not talking about a good soaking in the bathtub.
Raúl Musibay: Tell them to leave on the head, feet, tail and ears. Also make sure that all of the hair is removed from the skin.
Glenn Lindgren: Some whole pigs are shipped and handled frozen -- even at the butcher shop. A good butcher will thaw the hog out for you the day before you're scheduled to pick it up.
Jorge Castillo: We pick up the pig the day before we plan to eat it because we to marinate it overnight.
Glenn Lindgren: If your hog arrives frozen, don't freak out! It will probably arrive in a huge plastic bag stuffed into a huge cardboard box -- looking something like that bargain casket we bought several years ago for Uncle Victor...
Jorge Castillo: ... nobody liked Uncle Victor very much!
Glenn Lindgren: We thaw the hog out in the backyard by filling the plastic bag with a garden hose and cold tap water.
Jorge Castillo: We leave the water running so that it covers the pig and runs out over the sides. We have thawed even large pigs in a few hours using this method.
Jorge Castillo: We make sure that we defrost the hog without letting it get warm. This is especially important on a hot day, so we keep the thawing pig in a shady place.
Raúl Musibay: The pig should be defrosted, but remain well chilled throughout the process.
Raúl Musibay: Once the pig is thawed, we use a hammer and a machete or hatchet to crack the back bone -- the spine along the center of the hog.
Glenn Lindgren: We take extreme care not to cut or pierce the skin. The idea is to splay the pig out like a butterfly so it will cook more evenly and quickly.
Jorge Castillo: We pay special attention to the hog's head. It's important to crack through the head so that the hog can be completely splayed out. We like to use a machete and a hammer. Use the hammer to drive the blade through the snout, taking care not to cut all the way through.
Raúl Musibay: The person we got the pig from should have removed all of the hair or bristles from the pig. We use a safety razor and a little hot water to remove anything they missed.
Jorge Castillo: Hey, the skin is a tasty part of the pig and there's nothing like a little "stubble" to ruin your skin-eating experience!
Raúl Musibay: Once fully clean and split, we lay the hog out on a table and rub the outside of the skin with a liberal amount of salt.
Jorge Castillo: We turn the pig on its back and use a sharp knife to cut several slits, or pockets, in the meat, especially in the thicker areas like hams on the rear legs.
Raúl Musibay: We DO NOT cut through the skin.
Glenn Lindgren: We cover the inside of the pig with our prepared mojo (RECIPE: CLICK HERE) taking care to stuff all of the slits we made with the garlic. We salt the inside of the pig liberally.
We season the pig and marinate it overnight.
Raúl Musibay: The pig needs to marinate overnight.
Jorge Castillo: We have placed smaller hogs in a large wash tub filled with ice to keep them cool.
Glenn Lindgren: For larger pigs we have also laid several bags of ice -- double-bagged to make sure the bags don't leak -- on top of the pig.
Jorge Castillo: Then we cover the pig with an old, but clean sheet and keep it in a well-cooled room!
Glenn Lindgren: Miami Cubans do not dig a pit in the ground, cover the pig with wet banana leaves and hot rocks and bury it.
Raúl Musibay: Maybe that's the way they do it in Hawaii, but NOT in Miami!
Jorge Castillo: For one thing, the ground in Miami is solid coral below about three inches of top soil. You'd need a day or two with a jack hammer to dig a pit in this stuff.
Raúl Musibay: You'd probably hit water after the first foot.
Glenn Lindgren: And besides, we like to see what we're cooking.
Raúl Musibay: We build a "pig roaster" with concrete blocks, the kind you can pick up for about $2.00 at your local Home Depot. You need about 48 blocks to build a roaster four blocks high, four blocks long and two blocks wide.
Glenn Lindgren: The two end walls are inset between the long walls, making the actual width at each end about three blocks.
Raúl Musibay: The roaster can be built over grass or dirt in the back yard.
Glenn Lindgren: We like to use a piece of sheet aluminum on the ground below the roaster to reflect some of the heat.
Raúl Musibay: We've also done it for many years without this, so don't worry if you don't have a giant piece of aluminum lying around the house. It's not an essential piece of equipment.
Jorge Castillo: However, when making a roaster over grass, we rip out the grass with a hoe.
Raúl Musibay: Otherwise, the burning grass can give the pig a very bad flavor.
Jorge Castillo: A bed of clean sand over the grass can help prevent the grass from burning.
Glenn Lindgren: A concrete slab also works great if you don't mind a little staining.
Raúl Musibay: However, we NEVER set the roaster up on asphalt! The heat will melt the asphalt.
Jorge Castillo: Once we get the first two layers of blocks laid out, we cover the inside of the bottom two layers with aluminum foil.
Raúl Musibay: We use the next row of blocks to hold the foil in place. This helps keep more of the heat in the roaster.
Raúl Musibay: We start the fire by piling the charcoal
Glenn Lindgren: ...about 20 pounds...
Raúl Musibay: ...in the middle of the roaster. We soak the coal liberally with lighter fluid, and light it with a match. The we let the coals burn about 20 minutes until they are hot and white.
Jorge Castillo: Now this is important! We divide the coals in four with a long-handled shovel or a big stick and push them into the four corners of the cooker.
Glenn Lindgren: This provides an INDIRECT cooking method.
Raúl Musibay: It's the same way my father and my father-in-law did it in Cuba. NO coals should remain directly under the pig.
|
Pig Weight (Dressed) |
Charcoal |
Time |
|
55-80 pounds
|
40-70 pounds
|
4-5 hours
|
|
85-100 pounds
|
70-80 pounds
|
5-6 hours
|
|
105-140 pounds
|
80-100 pounds
|
6-9 hours
|
Raúl Musibay: Everyone wants to know: How long does it take to us cook a whole hog?
Glenn Lindgren: Basically it takes us approximately four to eight hours depending on the size of the pig and the temperature of the roaster.
Jorge Castillo: So we time our day accordingly.
Glenn Lindgren: If we want to eat at 6:00 and we have a 140 pound hog?
Raúl Musibay: We plan on starting early in the morning.
Now the "hard" part, sitting around drinking beer, telling jokes, enjoying the sunshine and oh yeah, watching the pig roast.
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It has become so difficult to find aluminum chainlink material, we now excusively use rebar to construct our pigholders.
Jorge Castillo: We use a pig holder that allows us to easily flip the pig during the cooking process.
Raúl Musibay: We use poles and mesh from a standard chain link fence.
Glenn Lindgren: We use either ALUMINUM OR ALUMINIZED chain link fabric (aluminum-coated steel mesh) for all surfaces that come in contact with the pig. WE NEVER USE galvanized metal!
Jorge Castillo: We lay the poles, which are galvanized metal since they never come in contact with the pig, across the top of our blocks to get an idea of the correct size. Then we cut two sections of wire mesh to size.
Glenn Lindgren: The bottom section can be more or less permanently affixed to the two poles with heavy gauge wire. We reinforce the mesh with the flat irons...
Raúl Musibay: ...it has to be strong enough to hold the pig.
Jorge Castillo: We use the other piece to cover the top of the pig and hold it in place. We use flat metal bars to spread and reinforce the mesh between the two poles.
Glenn Lindgren: Finally, we use pieces of heavy wire to wire the two sections together, one on top of the pig. This makes a "sandwich" with the hog as the "filling."
Raúl Musibay: Again, we use plenty of heavy gauge wire to wire the two sections together securely and we do this in many places.
(See illustration.)
We lay the pig belly side up (skin side down) on the wire mesh and use heavy wire and a pliers to wire the two sections together, one on top of the hog.
We place the whole works on top of our blocks.
We cover the top of the pig with large sections of standard weight aluminum foil to keep the heat in. (We place rocks on top to keep it from blowing away.)
Galvanized metal may leach into the pig and can be hazardous to your health.
Jorge Castillo: Steel rebar is a very common item that we can guarantee you'll find everywhere.
Glenn Lindgren: We avoid the very narrow gauge rebar, which is too pliable to carry the weight. We want rebar that is stiff and does not bend easily.
Raúl Musibay: We also don't want ANY coating on the rebar, just the plain old steel. So we pass on any plastic coated or GALVANIZED steel rebar.
Jorge Castillo: Some readers have told us about stainless steel rebar, and if you can get some, great -- it won't rust.
Glenn Lindgren: We prepare our rebar for first use by scrubbing it down with some steel wool, detergent, and plenty of hot water.
Raúl Musibay: We cut the rebar to the specified lengths. To assemble the pig-holding frame, we place the cross support bars (the shorter ones) ON TOP of the two main poles and wire the sections together using MULITIPLE turns of a heavy gauge UNCOATED steel wire.
Glenn Lindgren: We are talking HEAVY DUTY wire here -- the kind you need a pliers or two to work with. We have also used hose clamps -- the type you use in your car.
Raúl Musibay: We make sure to lay the pig out ON TOP of the crossbars so that the weight is supported by the two long polls. The top part of the "Sandwich" should be reversed so that when we flip the pig, the crossbars under the pig are again supported by the two long polls. The wire or hoseclamps are used to hold the bars in position, they ARE NOT meant to support any weight!
Jorge Castillo: The best option of all is to make a heavy-duty WELDED pig roasting frame.
Jorge Castillo: We make two complete sections, one for the top and one for the bottom.
Glenn Lindgren: We lay the pig down on the bottom section. Pigs are stiff and are easily supported -- even with this widely spaced grid.
Raúl Musibay: We place the top section on top of the pig with the support bars FACING DOWN. (So that when we flip the pig the crossbars lie ON TOP of the two poles. We wire the top and bottom together using a heavy gauge wire.
We cover the top of the hog with large sections of standard weight aluminum foil to keep the heat in. (We place rocks on top to keep it from blowing away.) We use commercial-sized aluminum foil from Sam's Club or Costco.
Place the whole works on top of your blocks.
We cover the top of the hog with large sections of standard weight aluminum foil to keep the heat in. (We place rocks on top to keep it from blowing away.) We use commercial-sized aluminum foil from Sam's Club or Costco.
Jorge Castillo: Now the "hard" part, sitting around drinking beer, telling jokes, enjoying the sunshine and oh yeah, watching the pig roast!
Glenn Lindgren: We don't need to watch the hog roast constantly, but someone needs to be available nearby to prevent any disasters. So we grab a beer or a Cuban soda, turn on some salsa music, open a bag of chicharrones and start the party early.
Three Guys Pig Roasts/Hog Roasts
Click on a link for photos of some of our pig roasts.
Raúl Musibay: About every 40 minutes, we add more charcoal through the front of the roaster.
Glenn Lindgren: Because the weight of the pig is carried by the bricks on the two longer sides, we can remove a block or two (carefully) in the front or back of the roaster as needed to add more charcoal.
Jorge Castillo: Raúl removes one brick from the front and tosses the charcoal into each corner.
Raúl Musibay: We add just enough to keep the coals going. The pig needs to cook slowly. Again, we always bank the coals into the four corners only! A 140 pound pig can require more than five (20-lb.) bags of charcoal.
Glenn Lindgren: Only remove the bricks to add more charcoal, and put them right back to contain the heat. Obviously, the bricks can get hot, so use something to protect yourself from burns.
Raúl Musibay: When you add more charcoal, it's a good time to add some more mojo. Pour it all over the body cavity then re-cover the pig with the foil.
Jorge Castillo: In Cuba, you had to make your own charcoal. It's a long and laborious process that involves starting logs on fire and partially burying them so that they smolder and burn incompletely. When Raúl first came to the United States, he thought that this was the way it was done all over the world.
Glenn Lindgren: Imagine his surprise when Jorge took him to a local supermarket and showed him bags and bags of charcoal all neatly packaged and stacked from floor to ceiling.
Raúl Musibay: Wow, man I couldn't believe it!
Jorge Castillo: The homemade charcoal does give the pig a distinctive taste.
Glenn Lindgren: But only a real diehard or the Cuban Martha Stewart would even THINK of attempting this feat today
Raúl Musibay: About half way through the cooking, we flip the pig over, cover and continue cooking.
Glenn Lindgren: Pigs can produce a lot of oil as they cook. We NEVER allow the oil to drip directly onto the hot coals!
Jorge Castillo: Some people use an aluminum tray to collect the oil that falls directly under the hog. We've used one of those large disposable aluminum turkey roasting pans (or two) just large enough to fit under the hog.
Raúl Musibay: The coals, banked into the four corners, should NOT touch the drip pans.
Jorge Castillo: Some people like to catch the oil and use it in cooking. Many people just let the oil soak into the ground.
Glenn Lindgren: When we use a sheet of aluminum below the pig with no drip pan, most of the oil smokes off as it hits the hot metal.
Jorge Castillo: However, we keep a hose nearby to put out unwanted fires.
Glenn Lindgren: We have noticed over the years that the pigs in the United States have gotten a lot leaner.
Jorge Castillo: In the "old days" we used to collect a gallon or more of rendered pig fat.
Raúl Musibay: Now, it's not unusual to get little more than a few ounces.
Raúl Musibay: We poke a fork in the underside of the pig, NOT through the skin! If the juices runs clear this is a good sign.
Glenn Lindgren: We use a knife to slice away some of the tender meat near the belly. Does the meat look cooked through?
Jorge Castillo: If you are not a good judge of cooked meat, we suggest you use a meat thermometer.
When the temperature reaches 160º F and we don't see any pink meat when we cut into the hams, we know the pig is done.
Raúl Musibay: Finally we remove the pig. Usually two people can lift the pig in its holder and pull it aside while someone else carefully REMOVES any drip pans (if you used them) and spreads the coals. If the pig is very large, we use four people -- one on each corner pole.
Glenn Lindgren: We spread the coals from the corners across the entire bottom of the roaster. Then we place the pig, in its holder with the skin-side down, back on top of the roaster so that the skin side is exposed to the bed of coals below.
Raúl Musibay: Every time we flip the pig it ALWAYS stays in the holder and ALWAYS rests on top of the bricks! We also keep the pig at the same cooking height throughout the entire roasting process.
Jorge Castillo: The extra direct heat from the coals will crisp up the skin. It should only take about five minutes -- maybe less. We watch it carefully so it doesn't burn! And we mean CAREFULLY!
Glenn Lindgren: PLEASE NOTE that we NEVER remove the hog from the holder until it is completely cooked!
Raúl Musibay: Finally we instruct a nearby child to run around the backyard shouting, "The pig is done, the pig is done!"
Jorge Castillo: This usually draws a crowd.
Glenn Lindgren: Hopefully we have enough hog for everyone!
The finished product: skin crisped and ready to serve.
Raúl Musibay: Carving the pig for serving is easy. We place the hog on a large table and use a large meat fork to pull the meat away from the bones.
Jorge Castillo: The meat is falling off of the bones by now.
Glenn Lindgren: We always strip the meat in chunks and shreds, we never slice it. We guess that's what they mean by "pulled pork."
Jorge Castillo: A sharp knife does come in handy to cut away the ribs -- a real delicacy.
Glenn Lindgren: Remember too that many people enjoy snacking on the crisp skin, so we don't throw the skin away until everyone has had their fill.
Jorge Castillo: The next day, we disassemble the pit and save the cement blocks for the next pig roast. Our blocks at Raúl's house are about 15 years old and are still good for many years to come.
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This account describes the methods we have used to cook pigs and the devices we have built solely for our own personal use. If you should decide to build your own pig roaster, understand that these are not complete instructions. The Three Guys From Miami cannot and do not guarantee or warranty anything that you may assemble yourself based wholly or in part on anything described in this account. Your skills and abilities may vary from ours, and there is no way that we can ensure that your "do-it-yourself" project will work as intended.
Thus, it is important that you note the following legal disclaimers:
This is only an account of our own experience with roasting pigs and it is NOT intended as a complete guideline or instruction manual.
The builder of any devices similar to, or adapted from, those described in the account on this site does so at their own risk and peril. The WEBSITE VISITOR IMPLICITLY ASSUME ALL RISKS inherent in the building of said devices AND in the preparation of any food item using these devices.
In no event shall iCuban.com, Cuban-Christmas.com, "Three Guys From Miami," any affiliated companies (Website Content Providers) or any individual associated with these entities be liable for any damages, including direct or consequential, personal injuries suffered, or property or economic losses incurred as a result of anyone using the information published on this website in any fashion.
The Website Content Providers assume no liability or responsibility for the design, construction, or use of any device similar to, or adapted from, any device described on this site.
The Website Content Providers make no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability of any device or method described on this site for any purpose whatsoever (including without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose).
The reader of this website must determine what, if any, purpose any device is suitable for, including the production and cooking of food items.
As in any project, you should follow all accepted safety procedures. For your safety, always consider your own skill level and use good judgment, care, and prudence if you attempt to duplicate or adapt ANYTHING described herein.
Always read and observe all instructions and safety precautions provided by any tool or materials manufacturer.
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