What!! Yes, we have modified our pig roasting or rather added a “Mouth Watering Twist” in Roasting Whole Hogs for a better product on the table. Plus, last year we introduced our Puerto Rican Style Roast as well, which I feel is the best we can offer. There are many ways to roast a whole hog and for us we have 4 different approaches when it comes to roasting a whole hog. Which I’ll explain below. #1 – Our Puerto Rican Style Roast. The hogs are butterflied which means they will lay flat when roasting. We split the chest cavity and the pelvic bone and backbone from front to back, which allows us to completely flatten the hog and remove the spinal cord. Then we take a knife and cut the inside rib cage film and other muscles and then we apply a vegetable oil and Johnny’s Famous Adobo Rub, after that we flip the pig and apply cuts at various places in the skin and do the same, apply oil and the Johnny’s Famous Adobo Rub. The hogs are placed in a bag and then we apply a vacuum to help push the rub flavors deeper into the skin and meat. A big plus with this style roast is that we can roast our large hogs on our rotisserie, which allows us to retain moisture plus focus on a perfect skin at the end of the roast by stopping the rotisserie and making the fire hotter right at the end. #2 – Our main change that we made starting mid 2023 was to wrap the hogs in aluminum foil about halfway through the roast process. We like to wait till the skin has split long enough for the meat and fat on the underside of the skin to turn to a golden brown or caramel color. When wrapping we start at the center of the hog and wrap a few turns of the rotisserie and then continue to wrap the hams and then back across the center and then head and shoulders are wrapped at least two revolutions and then we stop at the center. Then we push the foil tight to the rotisserie rods and hog so there are no large air gaps behind the foil. The final process is to wrap a thin craft wire in a helix around the foil, (you can do this while the rotisserie is running), this allows a structure to hold the foil in place. Then we take the charcoal tray and place it directly under the hog. We keep the charcoal trays full and hot, which helps to cook the hog like an oven or crock pot etc. After the hog’s shoulder reaches 175 F at the thickest part of the shoulder, we stop adding any charcoal and let the fire coast and let it go till we need to remove it from the rotisserie. Remove the pig at around 180 to 185 F Roasting this way allows us to put the best Moist Whole Hog Meat on the table, but the skin is steamed and soft. The skin can be placed in an oven at 350F for 45 minutes, however it’s not the same as the Puerto Rican Style Roast. #3 – Is the same as number #2 except no foil wrap, however you can stop the rotisserie to make the skin nice and crispy at the end, the only difference between the two is the quality of the meat on the table, option #3 will be a little drier, only because there is no barrier to keep the juices from dripping off. #4 – Grated grill is more of a set and let style of roasting, however the meat is sure to be drier and the skin is bitter with the smoke, and you lose meat that is against the grate, because of it drying out or burning, the roasting is simple but not our choice. Our Hogs are better when you allow us to add our optional Johnny’s Famous Dry Rubs that are designed to push out the awesome Pork Flavor, try them all. More on the Rubs later!

Looking back to May of 2020 which seems like just a few days ago, a lot has happened in making 2020 one of the most memorable years in modern history, due to Covid 19. Our first order was May 20th, 2021, and those orders consisted of 2 grill rentals and 1 gallon of sauce and then it slowly got off the ground and we ended up with an extremely busy October, by the same date in 2021 we had over 20 orders. The July 4th, 2020, weekend was our biggest to date with 16 orders, we rented 14 grills and sold 2 additional pigs. Late July in 2020 we connected with Gosset’s Homemade Foods, a local company that makes all our sides, there products are awesome and consistent. Well worth the connection and it made it more convenient for our clients as well. Their Mac & Cheese is the best I have ever tasted and is a big hit with everyone that buys it. I always say, “If there are two big guys and a little bit left over, someone is going to get hurt.” 2021 is totally different, our first order for 2021 was three 250lb pigs in early February wedding. March was pretty busy, and then May it have seemed everything broke loose, at the time of this writing June 11th is our second busiest weekend since July 4th 2020. Our process starts after we confirm our orders with the client, which made us change our order policy, the orders will only be processed and in our books with a 25% Non-Refundable Deposit, otherwise we could not make any plans for the weekend till the order confirmation, now it is easier to make our schedule, serious customers have no problem making a 25% deposit. Throughout the week our phone is ringing almost non-stop, especially just before a Holiday weekend with answering calls, teaching the DIY’ers and setting up our schedule’s weeks in advance, which makes scheduling a huge challenge, different size pigs, different pick-up times, different cook on site with different options., sometimes it seems that it would be easier to juggle 4 running chain saws!! Tuesday afternoon our order is placed with the Pig Farmer, and he weighs the pigs and hauls them to a State Inspected Slaughterhouse on early Wednesday morning to be processed. We pick up the pigs late Wednesday evening and put them in a temperature-controlled refrigeration unit, then if we have orders for our Dry Rubs, we oil the outside and apply the Rub on the outside and then we liquefy the Rub to inject at various spots in the Ham, Shoulder and Loins and place the pig in a bag and then we apply vacuum which helps to drive the flavor throughout the meat. I like to see the marinate process being at least 48 hours, I feel the optimizes the flavor of our Dry Rub. Now around 60% of all our orders get the Dry Rub Option and we are thrilled with great feedback. My personal favorite swings from the “Smokey to the Fruity”, depends on the mood, I guess. We hit our goal with the rubs, we wanted something to enhance the Roasted Pork flavor by adding a good rub, this rub needed to be mild but powerfully favorable. We coat the outside with our Dry Rub as well as the belly cavity and then we liquefy the rub and inject it into the thick meat. Our cooking usually starts on a Saturday and sometimes Fridays, so that means to get up early on Saturday morning or stay up on Friday nights to put the on the spit and on the fire, that may mean getting up at 1:00am to start the cook process and most times we are not done till late Saturday evening, so far, we survived on less sleep. Then on Monday the cleanup process starts, grills and equipment come back either Monday or Tuesday. It takes a lot of work making sure everything is cleaned properly for the next weekend, this is usually not all completed till Wednesday evening and then it starts all over again.

If you are a Grill Master or a Grill Master wannabe, then you have all the basic knowledge that you need, to do a superb job in roasting a pig, large or small. I am sure that the first time there will be a lot of apprehension, before you get started, but do not worry we are here to assist you from start to finish, if you have any questions, feel free to call.

Martin's Roast A Pig is proud to introduce one of our Cook On Site Chefs, Michael Moran. Michael started working for us late summer 2020 and he has been instrumental in assisting the customers by roasting and carving pigs at their parties.

Spring is definitely in the air and it is time to get out and enjoy the fresh air with family and friends. Considering what to serve and the stress of putting it together, keeping it going... AND enjoy time with family and friends... how do people do it?