Barbecue is good for us.

In preparation for the 1st Annual “The Other White Meat” Pig Roast and BBQ Sauce Contest Jamboree, Andrew, MJ, and I have been doing quite a lot of research into how to build our own pig roaster. We still haven’t come up with a final design, but there’s lots to share, so I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the problems and decisions we’ve faced.

Rentals

First, the bad news. Depending on where you live, you will probably have a difficult time finding a place to rent you a rotisserie that will handle more than 30 or 40lbs. Larger ones that are meant for pig roasting (and other big meats) often come on trailers and will set you back a mint. The places we found wanted us to pay about $60 to rent a large grill for the day, and $55 more for a motorized rotisserie which wouldn’t come close to handling our pig. So, guess we’ll have to roll our own.

Wooden Box: La Caja China

As far as we can tell, there are three primary ways to cook a 100lb pig (give or take) outdoors: rotisserie, butterfly, and wooden box. The first two share more in common than the last, so I’ll get that one out of the way first. Traditional Cuban roast pig is sopemtimes cooked in a wooden “China Box”, or La Caja China. Here’s a nice Washington Post piece about it. At lacajachina.com you’ll find some overly expensive devices for sale, but they’ll give you the flavor of the method. You basically put the pig in a big plywood box that’s lined with aluminum, add charcoal, and 6-8 hours later you have a perfect roast pig. At first this seemed like a good route for us – anyone can build a damn wooden box, right? Maybe, but the magic isn’t in the box, it’s in the delicate ballet of adding charcoal in certain amounts at certain times. When you buy the $300+ box you get the instructions for free. But, trial and error with 100lb pig and hungry pork-lovers is not a good game. Pass.

Wood and Metal?

Regardless of the cooking method you choose, the question of where to put the fire is more or less the same. A 100lb pig will be somewhere between 3.5 and 5 feet long, and with the legs probably 2 to 2.5 feet wide. So, the Weber isn’t gonna cut it. Neither, unfortunately, will the large grills that are common in many parks, including the East Bay park where we’ll be BBQin’. And the park rangers don’t take too kindly to people digging BBQ pits at their picnic sites, so that’s out. Want to build your own? Sounds good, but during the dry season, the park rangers consider that a ‘fire hazard’ or some such thing. Nuts. But still, we did bunch of planning before we found that out, so here’s some thoughts.

At first we were thinking about building a wooden structure a lot like the one you see above. (And dressing up like that awesome dude in top hat and tails…) Basically, a rectangle on legs to hold a metal container for the fire, trusses for the rotisserie (or whatever) and a reflector on one side. But, the trouble begins right away. What to put the coals in? Originally we thought about cutting a standard 55 gallon drum in half. But a 55 gallon drum is 24″ in diameter and 34″ high. Too narrow *and* too short. No dice on any other type of metal tub at either Urban Ore or Alco Metal. You might have better luck in your neighborhood. Plus, the dudes in the picture obviously went with all metal for the tub and tubing, a much better choice considering all that… fire. But we’re short on welding equipment. If you’re not, then go for it.

Build a Cinderblock Firepit

Then we hit upon a better idea: cinderblocks. Modular and easily transported. Fire resistant, heat absorbing. Andrew worked out a nice little plan. 5 blocks wide and 5 blocks long for a solid floor. Then 4 block-high walls on each side. That’s 25 blocks for the floor, 20 blocks for each of the long sides, and 12 for each of the short sides for a total of 89 blocks. At about $1.25 per block, it’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than any alternatives and completely reusable. Also, folks seem to give these things away for free on Craigslist all the time.

Andrew also had the idea to make up a wooden ‘fork’ to fit through the block-holes on both of the short sides. The vertical 2×4 wood pieces will add some stability, and the cross piece would give us a nice piece of level lumber to lay things on. What comes next depends on whether you’re going to rotisserie or butterfly.

Homemade Rotisserie

Starting from scratch, this is a daunting project. No spit, no meat forks. No handle for manual turning. No gears, belts, or motors to rotate mechanically. Worse, no power at the picnic site to run a motor. Someday we’d like to build one of these, and when we do we’ve got some ideas on how to do it, but that’s for another post.

Butterfly Roasting

This is more doable. The butcher will cut the pig in half (or almost in half) for you, right down the middle. You lose the benefits of roasting whole, but it’s much more manageable. Basically, the only trick to cooking the pig butterfly style is that you have to flip the damn thing partway through. When the pig starts to cook, it’s going to start to fall apart, so we need to use some metal gratings to keep it together. Enter the nice guys at Alco Metal in San Leandro, from whom we bought a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of what’s called ‘expanded metal’. (See, e.g., this site.) Basically it looks like the grating on a grill, with the holes between the thin bars of metal shaped like diamonds. Ours has 1/2 inch diamonds, I think. Anything between 1/4 inch and 3/4 inch would work. Important: it’s got to be stainless steel or it’s not food safe. We’ve heard that many folks will use regular steel for the grating and don’t die because of it, but it’s not a good idea. We got ours whole and paid about $4.00 /lb for it. It’s a big sheet, so it ends up being almost $100, but it’s worth it. Home depot will sell you smaller sized pieces if you have a very small pig. Note that all of this stuff will need to be scrubbed within an inch of its life to get all the grease and grime off.

Then what? Well, we also went to Home Depot and bought a few feet of bare copper wire (also food safe). When we get the pig, we sandwich it between the metal grating (which we cut in half with a Dremel Tool), and wire the two gratings together with cut pieces of the copper wire. Bingo, pig sandwich! Then when it’s time to flip over, we just get a few people, grab it with oven mits, and do some kind of elaborate flipping maneuver.

Whew! That’s a lot of info. I’m sure there’ll be more tips after the fact, but I’ll stop now.

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