Oven-Roasted Kalua Pig

A few years ago I went to Maui with my friend Channing and discovered a little takeout joint in Kihei called Da KitchenThey have Hawaiian plate lunches - meat and scoops of sticky, medium-grain Japanese rice and sweet, mayonnaise-y macaroni salad. My favorite was the Kalua Pig - pulled pork. It's traditionally made for luaus with a whole pig, baked in a pit in the ground called animu over hot coals for a whole day. Since that vacation, I've regularly craved that salty, smokey, porky flavor, but I've never been able to find it, even in so-called Hawaiian lunch places on the mainland. It's always dry or water-logged or stringy, lacking that delicious melt in your mouth texture and flavor that goes so well with fragrant sticky rice. So I decided to try make my own, abeit on a smaller scale.

I've made pulled pork in the past, roasting a pork shoulder in the oven slowly at 250-275°F for 8-10 hours or more. It was good, and the smell that filled the house was amazing, but simply covered in a pan with tinfoil, it was a bit dry. I also missed that barbecue smoke flavor. I did a little research into the traditional kalua way, and realized that I need to really seal in the moisture and fat of the meat to get the right texture. (Banana leaves work well here and are available in Latin American and Asian markets.) Then I added a touch of liquid smoke. I also thought I'd try cooking it at a higher temperature - 500 °F - for a shorter period of time - about 5 hours - thinking to replicate the searing heat of cooking over coals. Honestly, I think you'll get an equally good result cooking a shoulder at 250°F for 10 hours as you do at 500°F for 5 hours. The only difference will be that you'll get a tasty crackling skin at the higher heat. 500°F is a hot oven, so do whatever you have time for and are comfortable with.

To feed 6-8 people really well, you will need:

  • One pork shoulder, bone-in, skin-on, well-trimmed (lots of meat, not too fatty), 7-8 lbs.
  • Salt
  • One package banana leaves (acutally 1 giant banana leaf), available frozen in a latin market for about $1.50 Make sure they are dark green and nice looking, not brown or moldy. They will be dirty and slimy, so soak and scrub them well. Don't worry if the pieces of leaf pull apart a bit. Keep them in water until you're ready to use them.
  • Liquid smoke (I used Wright's Hickory Seasoning Liquid Smoke. Find a brand that is all natural and literally only contains concentrated smoke and water, no sugar or other flavorings.)
  • Lots of tin foil 
  • A roasting pan and meat rack

Directions:

Take the pork shoulder out of the fridge and allow to sit out for an hour or two at room temperature before cooking. This will save you cooking time and energy costs.

Preheat the oven to 500°F with the oven rack in the lower middle position. Rinse the pork and pat dry. Salt liberally, all over - I used a good 2-3 tablespoons of kosher salt.

On a large surface, spread out two layers of tinfoil, shiny side up, over a 1.5' by 2' area, making sure the edges overlap well. Take the wet banana leaf pieces and lay over the tinfoil, overlapping the edges. Place the salted pork in the middle, skin side down, and sprinke with 1 tablespoon of liquid smoke.

Wrap the banana leaves around the pork as completely and tighty as you can, then bring up the tinfoil around the meat and wrap well to secure the leaves and keep in the heat and moisture.

Set the meat rack in your roasting pan. (I actually don't have either, so I used a Calphalon 3 quart saute pan (just big enough) and a sturdy, heavy-gauge 9-inch aluminum pie plate, bottom-side up, to prop up the meat. (If you use this set-up, the high heat will likely warp your pie plate, so make sure it's not one you care too much about.

Now, flip your wrapped pork shoulder over so the skin side is now up, and place on the meat rack in the roasting pan. Add an inch or so of water to the bottom of the pan to keep any drippings from burning. Cover the pan with a final sheet of aluminum foil, shiny side down, crimping around the edges of the pan to create a seal.

Put in the oven and roast for about 5 hours. (I did 5 hours for a 7.5 pound roast, so that's about 40 minutes a pound.) Check and refill the water level every hour or so. In the last half-hour of cooking time, poke a hole in the bottom of the tin foil so that some of the now liquid fat can drain into the bottom of the pan.

Take out of the oven. I know I don't need to say this, but I will anyway: the pan is very hot. Burns hurt. Please use caution and drape pot holders over any handles as the pan is cooling. Peel back the tinfoil and taste. Yummy, right? When it's cool enough to handle, "pull" by scraping a fork over the soft meat, or use your fingers, and serve. Taste again and consider adding a light sprinkle of sea salt if needed. I served it traditonally with a scoop of sticky white rice and a scoop of store-bought macaroni salad. (I know, I know, mac salad is too sweet and too mayonnaise-y, but I'm a sucker for tradition.)

A note: Leftover pig freezes really well. There are all sorts of ways you can use it - quesadillas, pulled pork sandwiches, pizzas, curry, stir fry...

Girl with SpoonPork, gluten-free