Louisiana Pig Roast Recipes

ROAST PIG

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
• In a food processor, combine the sage, rosemary, the 5 garlic cloves, fennel seeds, olive oil, and salt and pepper and blend until a paste forms. (You can also mash these ingredients together with a mortar and pestle.)
• Using a sharp knife, butterfly the pork butt, so it opens up like a book. (You can also have your butcher do this for you.) Rub the inside cut of the meat with the paste. Using kitchen twine, tie the butterflied pork back together to make a compact shape.
• Place the halved garlic heads and potatoes, cut-sides down, on the bottom of a roasting pan to create a bed for the pork butt so it doesn't sit directly on the surface of the pan. Place the pork fat-side up on the bed of garlic and potatoes, drizzle lightly with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Place the pan in the oven and bake for 5 hours, or until the skin is browned and the meat is extremely tender; pour the wine over the pork after the first 30 minutes of roasting and baste the meat with the collected pan juices every 40 minutes.
• Remove from the oven and let rest for 20 minutes. Remove the twine before cutting the pork into 12-inch-thick slices.
• IMPORTANTE! After slow-roasting the pork, the garlic should be soft. Spread it on bread for an appetizer. Serve with Oven-Roasted Potatoes. The potatoes make for a nice cook's treat-snack on them while you're waiting for the pork to rest.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• On a baking sheet, place the potatoes, carrots, garlic, rosemary, and sage. Drizzle with the olive oil, season with salt and pepper to taste, and toss to coat.
• Roast for 50 to 60 minutes, tossing halfway through, until the potatoes are crisp and golden. Remove from the oven and serve.
• IMPORTANTE! To parboil and pan-roast these potatoes: In a pot, combine the whole potatoes with water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the pot and set them aside to cool. Cut the potatoes into 3/4-inch chunks and add to a large nonstick skillet with the carrots, garlic, rosemary, and sage. Dress with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and heat on high until the potatoes are crisp and golden, occasionally moving the potatoes by shaking the pan handle. Avoid stirring with a spoon or spatula, so that you don't break the skin, and the potatoes can achieve a nice sear.

LOUISIANA - PIG ROAST

Steps:

• Prepare the meat:.
• Trim the roast leaving just a little fat on it.
• Prepare the meat:.
• Mix all the ingredients above except the Mustard. Bring mixture to a boil then let cool stirring every few minutes to release the seasonings.
• Draw mixture into an injector and inject the roast putting the needle as close to the center of each muscle as you can (doesn't have to be perfect). Rub the outside of the roast with mustard then sprinkle a little Old Bay seasoning all over it.
• Put the roast in a zipper lock bag or in a covered bowl. Put it in the fridge overnight (at least 8 hours).
• Light the pit and get a nice hot fire going. Add a bunch of soaked hardwood chips to the fire. Put the roast right over the fire. Let the roast get dark brown all over. Take it off the fire and put it in a covered pan. Use a disposable aluminum pan if you're going to finish it on the pit.
• Note: You have a choice here, you can finish it on the pit, or, in the oven. What's nice about this is that you can take care of the browning, remove it, and continue to barbecue other things.
• In the oven, set the roast in a pan and broil it until the browning completes.
• Now, here's the juiciness trick. Add about 3/4 cup of water to the pan, or, keep enough water in the pan to cover the bottom. Cover it well with aluminum foil and, on the pit, set it off to the side away from the fire. Note: The heat should be at least 275ºF in this section of the pit. Check the water content every half hour and flip the roast each time. In the oven set the temp to 275ºF and do the same.
• When is it done? Use a meat thermometer and test the thickest part of the roast, 160ºF is where you want it. Here's where you have a choice. You can take it out and slice it now, or, continue to let it cook. If you continue to let it cook the muscle sections will begin to pull away from each other, and become more and more stringy. It is more apt to be dry so you must baste it from here on out. If it gets too dry you won't get the moisture back in the meat immediately, you'll only have dry meat in a sauce.
• As you slice it dredge it in the liquid, or just leave it in the liquid. Taste the liquid to see if it needs any seasoning.
• After the first few taste testers visit be careful with the knife so you don't wind up with additional finger food.

CUBAN-STYLE ROAST PIG

Steps:

• Place pig skin side down on a large work surface. Strain one recipe of the mojo into a bowl, reserving solids. Transfer liquid to a large syringe and inject the mojo into the meat of the pig every 3 to 4 inches, taking care not to push syringe down so far that it punctures the skin on the underside of the meat. Sprinkle the interior and exterior of the pig with adobo criollo and rub all over; rub reserved solids from mojo over rib cage. Cover and let marinate, chilled, overnight.
• Bring pig to room temperature. Lock the pig into the wire rack of the Caja China by using the S-hooks. Place locked pig in the Caja China on top of the drip pan, skin side down. Insert a meat thermometer with a cable attachment into the thickest rear section of the pig.
• Place ash pan and grid tray on top of the Caja China. Fill the bottoms of two large chimney starters with crumpled newspaper. Starting with16 pounds of charcoal briquettes (not instant), fill the tops of the chimney starters with some of the 16 pounds of charcoal. Place a chimney starter on each end of the grid tray; light the newspaper in each chimney starter. Flames will sweep up through the chimney, igniting charcoal. When charcoal is red-hot, after 15 to 20 minutes, dump out charcoal from starters and add remaining charcoal to total 16 pounds; spread evenly across grid tray. After 1 hour of cooking, evenly add 8 pounds charcoal. Repeat process every hour until pig reaches 185 to 187 degrees, about 3 1/2 hours.
• When pig has reached 185 to 187 degrees, two people wearing protective gloves should raise the grid tray and carefully shake ashes off the coals and into ash pan. Carefully place the grid tray on the long handles. Two people should then lift the ash pan with ashes and safely dispose of them, adding water to ensure they do not cause a fire.
• Using protective gloves, carefully turn pig skin side up and return to the Caja China. With a knife, carefully make cross cuts into skin between each grid of the rack, taking care not to cut into the meat. Return ash pan and grid tray with hot coals to the Caja China and cook, until skin is crisp, 30 to 45 minutes more.
• Heat remaining recipe mojo and transfer to a serving bowl. Remove ash pan and grid tray from Caja China. Lift wire rack containing pig out of the Caja China. Detach S-hooks and remove top rack. Serve meat on rolls topped with warm mojo and chopped onions, if desired.

WHOLE ROAST SUCKLING PIG

Steps:

• Heat oven to 300 degrees. Prepare the pig: Wash it, including the cavity, under cold running water, and towel-dry thoroughly, the way you would dry a small child after a bath - ears, armpits, chest cavity, face, legs, backs of knees.
• Sometimes there are imperfections remaining after the slaughtering and processing of the animal. Use dish towels or sturdy paper towels to rub away any dark spots on the ears, any little bit of remaining bristles around the mouth. Like that yellow, papery flaking skin you sometimes find on chickens, which can be peeled off to reveal tender, fresh skin underneath, a similar bit of crud can remain on pigs' chins and under their belly flaps. Clean this little cutie as if you were detailing your car! The purple U.S.D.A. stamp, however, is indelible. But not inedible.
• Bard the pig with all 20 garlic cloves, making deep incisions all over with a thin filleting knife and shoving the cloves into each pocket; include the cheeks and the neck and the rump and the thighs and the loin down the back and the front shoulders, all areas of the small creature that have enough flesh to be able to receive a clove of garlic. (Sometimes I find I have to slice the larger cloves of garlic in half to get them to slide into the incision.)
• Rub the entire pig in oil exactly as you would apply suntan oil to a sunbathing goddess of another era, when people still were ignorant of the harmful effects of the sun. Massage and rub and get the whole creature slick and glistening. I do this directly in a very large roasting pan.
• Wash and dry your hands. Take large pinches of kosher salt, and raising your arm high above the pig, rain down the salt in an even, light dusting all over. You can start with the pig on its back and get the cavity and the crotch, and then turn it over and get the back and the head and flanks. Or vice versa. But in the end, the whole animal is salted evenly and lightly, snout to tail.
• Arrange the pig in the roasting pan, spine up, rear legs tucked under, with feet pointing toward its ears and its two front legs out ahead in front. Sometimes the pig needs a sharp, sturdy, confident chiropractic crack on its arching spine, just to settle it in comfortably to the roasting pan, so it won't list to one side or topple over.
• Put the potato deep into its mouth, and place in the oven, on the bottom rack, and roast slowly for about 4 to 5 hours, depending on the size of your pig. (Plan 15 minutes of roasting time per pound of pig; if you have a 20-pounder, then you'd need about 5 hours total cooking time.) Add a little water to the roasting pan along the way if you see the juices are in danger of scorching, and loosely tent the animal with aluminum foil in vulnerable spots - ears, snout, arc of back - if you see them burning. For the last half-hour, raise the oven temperature to 450 degrees, and cook until the skin gets crisp and even blistered, checking every 10 minutes.
• Tap on it with your knuckle to hear a kind of hollow sound, letting you know the skin has inflated and separated from the interior flesh; observe splitting of the skin at knuckles - all good signs the pig is done. Or use a meat thermometer inserted deep in the neck; the pig is ready at 160 degrees. Let rest 45 minutes before serving.
• Remove the potato, and replace it with the apple. Transfer the pig to a large platter; nestle big bouquets of herbs around the pig as garnish. Save pan juices, and use for napping over the pulled meat when serving.

SWEET 'N SPICY LOUISIANA PORK ROAST RECIPE - (5/5)

Steps:

• 1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl, combine brown sugar, thyme, mustard, allspice, garlic salt, chile powder and cumin; reserve. Toss onions with 2 T. oil; stir in 1 T. spice mixture and toss well. 2 Combine remaining spice mixture with remaining 1 T. oil; rub evenly over top and sides of pork. Place pork in large roasting pan; arrange onions around roast. 3 Roast, stirring onions occasionally, until meat thermometer inserted into thickest part of pork away from bone registers 160 degrees, about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing. Sprinkle onions with chopped cilantro and serve.

LOUISIANA ROAST BEEF

Steps:

• In a small bowl combine the onions, celery, bell peppers, butter and seasonings, mix well.
• Place roast in a large roasting pan, fat side up.
• With a large knife make 6 to 12 deep slits in the meat (to form pockets) down to a depth of about 1/2 inch from the bottom; do not cut all the way through.
• Fill the pockets to their depths with the vegetable mixture, reserving about 1 tablespoon of the vegetables to rub over the top of the roast.
• Bake uncovered at 300F until a meat thermometer reads about 160F for medium doneness, about 3 hours.
• For rarer roast, cook until thermometer reads 140F.
• Serve immediately topped with some of the pan drippings if you like.