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....
