my brothers and i have been debating the idea of roasting a whole pig, caribbean-style, for over a year. despite my occasional forays into vegetarianism, i've always been completely on-board. this summer we finally got our act together and we hosted the first annual freeman family pig roast. as the name implies, hopefully this will be a yearly event.
we got the pig from a butcher in laurel, md. that one of my mom's friends had recommended to her. on the morning of the first annual freeman family pig roast, my brother and i ventured out to pick up our 62-pound, new (and newly dead) friend. i decided to name him napoleon, after the antagonistic pig in animal farm. i thought it was a fitting name, but no one else really thought it was that funny.
the nice, blood-soaked men at the butcher shop butterflied good ol' napoleon for us. they cracked the spine and lay him flat. at this point, i was feeling a little nauseous. it hadn't really registered until just then that we were about to drive a carcass 40 minutes home and roast it in the backyard where my playset used to be. as you can see in the photo above, i got past my squeamishness fairly quickly (although i am clearly not actually touching the pig).
we injected the pig with a blend of grapefruit juice, orange juice, pineapple juice and a lot of garlic. we used marinade injectors to drive the liquid into the meat. after we had injected all the liquid, we rubbed it down with lemons, oranges and limes. the meat tasted citrusy and tender - very cuban.
to actually cook the pig, we used a cajachina that my brother alex borrowed from his boss. it was basically a box with white-hot coals on top. after we marinaded the pig, we left it in there to cook for five hours. every half hour, my brothers changed the coals on top so it stayed consistently hot.
we served the pig with a mountain of rice & beans, coleslaw, roasted corn with butter and cilantro, and a mustardy barbecue sauce. we also had sangria and a keg of yuengling.
we used these instructions to cook the pig after we marinaded it.
to make the rice & beans, my mom cooked black beans with a green pepper in the crock pot all day leading up to the pig roast. when the beans were done, she sautéed onion, garlic and another green pepper together in a sauce pan with olive oil. she then took a few spoonfuls of the black beans and mashed it in the pan with the vegetables. then, she added a glug of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to deglaze it all before adding it to the beans along with cumin, coriander and a bay leaf.
we roasted the corn on a rack on top of the coals as the pig cooked. after they were slightly blackened and completely cooked, we brushed them with a mixture of melted butter and chopped cilantro. super good.
in keeping with the cuban theme, we used this coleslaw recipe. we also made this south carolina-style barbecue sauce. everything was delicious, and fairly imprecise, even when we did use a recipe. even though we had 50 of our closest friends over, there was still a ton of everything leftover. it wasn't hard to convince people to take everything home. but still, i brought pork with rice & beans to my internship for lunch every day for the next week.
until next year, napoleons of the world!
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