Lechon Party!

July, 2011

A few months ago my dad got the idea to roast a pig Filipino style and make some lechon. He researched lechon on google, watched YouTube videos, and spoke to numerous people to figure out how to roast a whole pig. The big day finally came and I flew home to Kauai to check it out.

My dad got a 105 lbs pig and it was chillin in a cooler on ice when I arrived. It had been cleaned and gutted so all we had to do was season it, stuff it, skewer it, rig it, and roast it. Simple right? Yeah, no problem.

We hauled the the pig onto a prep table in the backyard near my dads makeshift fire-pit. Oh by the way, my dad named the pig Porkie but also called it porker...so I guess it really had two names. Anyway, we got the raw pig onto the table and checked it out. There was a small slit at the throat and a large one along its gut. I could pull open the gut and see the hollowed-out inside and the ribs. Kinda cool. I often found myself playing with the pig. Moving its legs to make it look like its running, poking its eyes, shaking its hands, checking out its teeth. Does that count as playing with your food? Whatever, I was having fun with it.

To season the pig we used Hawaiian salt and ground pepper. We lined the inside of Porkie with the seasoning and then skewered the thing. We rammed a pointed metal rod down the pigs throat, through the hollowed-out belly, and right out the back end...yeah that back end. With the rod in place we continued to stuff the pig with garlic, onion, and lemongrass. Next it was time to run some skewers through the pig, which also ran through the rod, to make sure the pig stayed attached to the main rod. The pig's skin is pretty thick so we really had to jam the skewers through it. Then we sewed up the pig's gut to keep all our flavorings inside. Skewered and sewed up, Porkie was ready to hit the heat.

My dad made his own fire-pit with a motor to automatically turn the pig. He placed cinder blocks on the ground, laid chicken wire on top of the blocks, and had some sheet metal around the sides to enclose it and trap the heat. The idea was to rig the main rod with the pig to the motor and place hot coals on the chicken wire and let Porkie roast. As we prepped the pig my mom lit some coals and piled them into the pit. However, the heat was severe enough that the grass caught fire. It didn't burn much but there's a nice charred spot in the yard now.



Backup roasting-pit



Unfortunately, we couldn't properly fix Porkie to my dad's motor apparatus and had to resort to the backup plan. My uncle had access to a roasting pit fashioned from an oil barrel and brought it over earlier. It had two side walls and a roof to trap the heat. The pig fit nicely into it. We turned the motor on and Porkie was on a roll.

My dad bought about a dozen bags of charcoal (Costco anyone?) and two large bags of coconut husk to cook the pig. He learned that burning coconut husk will give the smoke some aroma and add flavor to the pig, similar to using hickory or apple-wood to smoke meat. It didn't take long for Porkie to start dripping fat-juices. The juices only dripped off on one side so we moved to coals to the opposite side to prevent grease fires from shooting up and charring Porkie. This is where the first panic moment came.

When my dad and uncle were raking the coals to one side of the pit they accidentally shook the whole apparatus, which shook the rod that Porkie was stuck to off its track. Porkie fell into the fire, or the coals I should say. Panic ensued. We had to break down the roofing and side panels of the fire-pit so we could lift the pig off the coals all while Porkie was burning up. It took a few minutes but we got Porkie back on his rig and all was good. Only the underside was slightly charred...okay well it was straight up burnt.

After that incident we got the coals all situated and added some coconut husks. Porkie was turning steadily and cooking nicely. And then garlic started to fall out of him. Turns out that as the meat cooks it'll shrink a bit, thus the hole in the pig's gut will become bigger, and the stitch we made will become looser. So every time Porkie rotated a garlic fell out.

Porkie wouldn't be done cooking for about six hours so in the meantime my uncle and I drove across the island to pick up my brother in Hanapepe. He missed all the fun of stuffing and skewering the pig. When we got back to the house Porkie was still spinning and roasting. But we missed another incident. The pig fell in the fire...again.

One of the skewers that held the pig to the main rod came loose. As the pig turned the skewer caught on the roof of the fire-pit and the skewer bent out of shape. The main rod came off its track again, the whole fire-pit started leaning and almost fell apart, and Porkie was back on the coals. Luckily my parents reacted quickly and fixed the whole thing. They got Porkie rigged back up in no time.

With a missing skewer the pig's hind legs began to dangle a little low. They dipped into the coals with every turn. My parent's solution was to wrap Porkie up with rope...well not exactly rope, not exactly a string but something in the middle like a sturdy yarn. They used it to tie the legs tighter to the pigs body and half mummified Porkie. It worked really well!

My dad learned a trick to prevent the skin from burning while the pig roasted by spraying some water on the pig. So we enhanced the idea and used Hawaiian salt mixed with beer to spray the pig. Give it some extra flavor!

Evening came and the pig was fully cooked. Now it was time to take it out of the fire-pit and serve it up. Problem was none of us knew how to do that. To be honest we didn't know what we were doing all along but it would be a shame to mess it up now. People had arrived and they were hungry and eager to try the lechon. It was time to improvise.

We took off the roof and side panels of the fire pit and stared and the pig for a few minutes. If we looked hard enough a solution would eventually come to mind. And it did! We moved a table next to the fire pit and figured we'd just hoist the pig, metal rod and all, onto the table. Trouble was the coals were still hot and the metal rod was just as hot too. My dad put some thin metal sheets, which I think was really just chicken wire wrapped in foil, over the coals to block the heat. I was given two worn out pot-holders that were about as thick as the shorts I was wearing to protect my hands. Good protection from the heat, no doubt.

One of my cousins (I think he's a cousin) had a real heat-resistant oven mitt and lifted one end of Porkie's rod. Since the motor was still running the pig was still spinning at my end of the rod and the thing came of its track...again. Porkie fell onto the coals...again. But this time there was a crowd of people urging me to hurry up and pick up the pig. I panicked to find a part of the rod cool enough to grip and hoisted Porkie out of the coals. My cousin and I placed the pig onto the table and we all stared at it again trying to figure out how to take the skewers out and how to untie all the rope-yarn that looped around the porker. We ended up using knives and wire-cutters to untangle everything. We got it, no problem.



Porkie likes guava



The pig was free of its skewers and untied. We moved it to the party area. I wanted to stick an apple in its mouth Looney-Tunes style but we didn't have any apples. So we used a guava instead, Looney-Tunes Hawaiian style! Then, again, we stood around Porkie staring at it, this time trying to figure out how to carve the thing. After several minutes my dad and cousin each grabbed a knife and sliced into the pig. They did the best they could, which was actually pretty damn good.



Porkie was served! And he was 'ono! That's delicious to my non-Hawaiian speaking friends. Perfectly cooked, tender and juicy, and flavored nicely with everything we stuffed inside. Remember the garlic that fell out while the pig was roasting? Well even those things were delicious. Roasted garlic drizzled in melted pig fat...mmmm mmmm good!



Roasted Garlic



All an all, Lechon party was a success. But, of course, with many lessons learned. Next time we figured to stuff the pig and then line the inside with Ti leaves to keep the garlic from falling out. We'll also purposely roast some garlic on its own because that was a great side dish. We also learned to tie to the legs close to the pigs body from the start to avoid any mishaps with the fire-pit. What else...somebody told us in order to get the pig's skin real nice 'n crispy to poke a lot of holes in it before throwing it on the fire (Porkie's skin was a little tough, but I'm not a skin eater so I didn't mind). We had over a dozen lessons learned, too many to keep track of. Hopefully somebody wrote them all down.

There were about 40 people at the Lechon party. All friends and family. I got so see some of my cousins who I haven't seen in a while, always good. And I got to meet my newest family member, Maka. C ute baby girl, 4 months old. Good food, good people, good times! My dad plans on having an annual Lechon party, and I hope he does because it was fantastic. And hopefully some of you reading this who weren't there can make it next time. It's good eats!



Me 'n Porkie