I'm really tired and half-roasted and sore-footed at the end of the pig roast - not without epics of course. Anyway, all well that ends well, and we had a load of crackling that was truly wonderful. My camera ended up here, and the pig 2km away. Lots of pictures were taken but not by me. I'll eventually get some, and put them up.
Lessons in pig spit-roasting. Dry salting the skin - flavoring inside the pig works. Unlike lamb constant basting is not needed. Constant heat is and quite a lot of it for longer than the lamb - and you do not want the heat straight underneath - drip trays there. We need next time to spend a lot more time balancing the spit. Securing a relatively small - 25 kg pig - was not easy and not adequate. We used some mesh on the mid-section. This worked well until I covered mid-sections with foil as it was prone to over cook and burn. Unfortunately the foil, coated in fat, is prone to catch fire, and as the foil has a nice air-space with the wire netting under it... well, you can't put it out.
Our electric spit motor had an issue part way through the cooking - and that left me standing in the sun, turning the spit by hand for about 45 minutes. It's HOT work. Anyway, we had beautiful crackling, good tender pork, loads of new potatoes, and salads and fresh bread, and then sticky date pudding and cheesecake (yum) before Barbs Birthday cake and our tuneless singing.
Now we have about 10kg of pork left...
Many spit roasts that I have seen have two, two pronged tines. After sliding the piggy on the spit the tines slide down either side of the spit securing the head and the back end. They had a little thumb screw to tighten them in place. Additionally, since everyone was scared to death of the pig falling off and into the fire, wire would be wrapped through the spine and around the spit in numerous places.
ReplyDeleteI didn't participate much in that because such events happen around special occasions, which require the services of Qualified Pourer of Beer. That would be me. ;)