Man, Thanksgiving eatin's got nothing over these porker BBQs. My system is finally getting back to normal.
This time we lowered the pig down to the heat by one layer of bricks and bumped up the heat considerably.
1) Day before...split the pig down the center to butterfly open on the grill, and poked about 60 garlic cloves into the meat - NOT from the skin side, you don't want any holes in the skin or it will rip open during cooking.
2) Created the marinade/rub to be injected into the meat the night before:
- fresh minced garlic cloves (used food processor and the large bag of peeled garlic from Costco)
- mixed 4 cups orange juice, garlic, salt, pepper, and Cavender's Greek Seasoning
- Injected about half into the large muscle groups (hams, shoulders, backstraps (through the ribs) and then let the rest sit in the fridge over night.
2) Started a good charcoal and alder log fire by 5AM.
3) Let the fire burn down to coals with almost no flame at all. Then divided the coals into four even groups and moved into each corner of the BBQ pit.
4) Tied the pig into the steel grid and rubbed the skin side with sea salt and the remaining marinade onto the meat side.
5) We placed Mr. Pig onto the pit and covered with the sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil and pinned the edges down with logs and rocks to keep the heat in.
6) Finally, after flipping a couple times, by 2:00 we were ready to start diving in.
Cooking hot and closer to the fire was the ticket. As long as there aren't any flames, the skin stays golden brown and ends up crispy like a pig-tato-chip. And the meat was fall-off the bone, juicy, fatty...
