Sunday, April 3, 2011

La Caja China Roast Pig

I am sure you have all heard of "La Caja China", the Chinese roasting box. Well we have roasted many pigs in this box. This post is about the 1st time we tried.

A little background about the box. Their web site is located here: http://www.lacajachina.com/. The whole story is right there.

My friend Steve Cruz of CruzinGuam fame on the BarbequeBible forums,  http://www.barbecuebible.com/board/index.php, somehow was able to get his hands on one large "La Caja China". Steve gets into everything BBQ, let me tell you. He is a fanatic. Anyway, he organized a little get together of family and friends and wanted to break in the "Caja" (box in Spanish). He gave me the unassembled box and asked me to take care of the assembly. I had no problems with that as I was looking forward to cooking the whole pig.

I assembled the box, which was very easy. I then bought a 60 lb., dressed out whole hog. I butterfly cut the hog right down the middle to include splitting the head. I made the mojo from the recipe on the La Caja China web site and injected this into the pig. I poured the rest over the pig that I had placed into a large, plastic, heavy duty 44 gal. trash bag and place this all into a large cooler. I turned the pig numerous times to allow the marinade to be evenly distributed during the night.

The next day, the day of the event, I loaded up the truck, went to the store and bought four 20 bags of charcoal. Drove about 45 minutes to Steve's place, yes Guam is not that small, and the rest was history.

The following pictures detail this fun event.

 Placing the pig onto the prep table

 Applying my rub very liberally over both sides

The pig is secured on the cooking grates

Being placed inside La Caja China

Lowered and ready to go

The roasting lid is on and the coals are started.
 BTW, the complete cooking instructions are located right on the box.
It is a fail safe method.

The pig is ready 3 1/2 hours later just as the instructions said

The guys just can't keep their hands off that crispy skin

It's a lost cause trying to police this group

Examining the results was easy.... tender, succulent and crispy

Gotta get my share before it is all gone

Maybe a little bit more. You can tell I need to fill my tank

We all had a great time and there was plenty of other BBQ, food and drink.

Until next time....

4 comments:

cowgirl said...

Looks excellent Rueben!

Rueben said...

Thank you. This was too easy. I have done many others since this first time but thank goodness the instructions were Rueben friendly. I need all the help I can get.

Perry P. Perkins said...

Beautiful pics! Where ever those palm trees are, I want to retire there! Roberto's mojo recipe is hard to beat, huh? LOL

- Perry

Perry P. Perkins
Author - "La Caja China Cooking"
https://www.createspace.com/3445714

Rueben said...

Perry, thanks for the visit. I feel fortunate that I live on Guam. Came here in 1986. My wife is from here. Best move I ever made.

Yes, the mojo is spot on. When you inject it, it just soaks down to the bone and what a flavor. It is my favorite mojo.