I attempted the impossible roast suckling pig - and it was actually pretty easy
My pig was 21 pounds and its rear was stamped with "6/24" — the worst day of its short life. Suckling pigs range from 12 to 20 pounds. Their tender sweetness is due to a lack of muscle and abundance of fat, mostly around the upper thigh and shoulder areas.
I had two co-chefs during my adventure, one a culinary school grad and both trained sommeliers. After being confronted with the date of the pig's death, we needed something to take the edge off. We reached for a chilly bottle of Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé.
We saved money by having the chef of a local Filipino restaurant order the pig for us at wholesale cost, about $5 per pound. I called around to butcher shops in New York and the price was double or more across the board.
We carried our glasses into the kitchen and did our mise en place. I halved six lemons, quartered four white onions, chopped one cup garlic, and rinsed two bunches green onion.
My friend Bao, the chef among us, mixed the spices — two tablespoons each ginger and garlic, plus salt an pepper to taste. The chef who helped us get the pig, Miguel Trinidad, gave us his recipe, which is for a Filipino-style roast pig.
Bao rubbed the cavity with the spice mixture and threw in a couple of bay leaves. Our pig's belly was completely empty, but most of the time the "pluck" (liver, heart, kidneys, lungs) is left in.
You owe it to the pig to fry the pluck up or make a country paté with it. We were kind of disappointed that ours was offal-deficient.
Time to stuff. The night before, I'd watched a YouTube video of Julia Child's suckling pig technique. She preaches cleaning the pig's ears and scanning its skin for any hairs that haven't been removed. We of course followed Julia's advice.
Here's the video.
We picked up a $2 turkey lacing kit to sew up the belly. You can also use a butcher's needle and twine. Genius Julia shows how you can use twine and thin finishing nails from the hardware store to stitch the belly closed in her video.
Our work was not perfect, but it was secure. Any way you choose to do it is kind of like tying shoelaces.
Because we picked up the pig on the same day as our roast, we didn't know how big it was going to be. This roasting pan was our biggest fail of the day. It was like cramming an elephant into a canoe. The ears are covered with foil, per Julia and chef Miguel's instructions.
Julia's video shows a few ways to bend the legs to help the pig fit in your pan.
Somehow, it fit in the oven. We brushed it generously with soy sauce and canola oil before sliding it in to a 350 degree oven to roast for two-and-a-half hours. Chef Miguel instructed us to baste with the soy sauce and oil mix every half hour.
You can also baste with soy sauce and the juices from the pig. If you don't want to use canola oil, choose something that can stand the high heat. Avoid olive oil.
My friends ran out to pick up some treats from Underwest Donuts to use in our dessert (more on that later) while I stayed behind to baste.
Underwest Donuts is a must-try if you're near Midtown West. It's a stand located in the hallway of a car wash that's run by a former fine dining chef.
Here's how brown it got within the first 30 minutes.
After about an hour, we needed something to do so we made Vietnamese iced coffee and watched "The Talented Mr. Ripley."
When a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 135 to 145 degrees, it's time to pull the pig out. The foil comes off the ears in the last half hour.
TIP: If the skin doesn't feel crispy enough by the last baste, spray the sides of your oven with water. That's an old pastry trick that chef Miguel recommends.
This little piggy needs 35 minutes of rest before carving.
We couldn't find an apple small enough to fit in its mouth, but we couldn't leave it out.
We used our pig to make rice bowls, so we did a quick pickle on some cucumbers and set the table while the meat was resting. In addition to the cucumbers, we had...
...simple roasted kabocha squash...
...flash-fried snow peas...
...incredibly fresh and zingy shiso leaves...
...and of course, some pickled daikon.
You can make a gravy with the drippings but for our purposes we just drained the juices into a bowl. A drizzle of this brought all of our rice bowl ingredients into harmony.
Our setup, complete with a refreshing watermelon salad chef Miguel made for us.
Time to carve. Bao got out his knife kit and began, as Julia instructs, by making a cut down the spine.
Then you take off the front leg (starting at the top of the shoulder), the hind leg, and the scant meat on the middle of the pig's back.
The front leg has the juiciest meat, in my opinion. Chef Miguel told me to make a fast move for the cheek, which I did.
We ate almost three bowls each! It was that good. The meat was incredibly tender, juicy, and sweet. Our skin didn't come out as crisp as we'd have liked, but we didn't have a spray bottle on hand to try Miguel's pastry trick for a crisper skin. Still, it was inordinately satisfying.
We ate until we could eat no more.
And we guzzled many glasses of Alsatian wines. My personal favorite was the 2010 Paul Blanck Riesling Schlossberg, which has a faint sweetness and, at a little over thirty bucks, has won more awards than any other wine from the region, or so I read on Wine Searcher after drinking it down.
We took the easy route on dessert: crispy pig ear sundaes with Miguel's coconut syrup and crumbled doughnuts from Underwest.
I can't even describe how delicious the combination of crispy pig ear, coconut syrup, ice cream, and doughnut is. I used my pig ear like a chip to scoop up the sundae. Best chip and dip of my entire life.
Going into this I was sure the photos would be amazing and we'd have a good time, but I didn't expect to want to do it again, which I absolutely do! It's a challenge that anyone with patience and a couple hundred bucks can rise to. And the leftovers are the best part. I made chicharones with some of the skin the next morning.
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