Pig on a Spit: Practice Run
Please note, this post is NSFV (Not Safe For Vegetarians/Vegans).
Mr: I want to do a spit roast for my birthday.
Me: *stunned silence*
Mr: A rotisserie pig.
Me: OHHHHH! Yep, sounds good.
And that is how the madness began. Over the last month, Mr has visited every butcher within 10km of our house to chat for hours about piggies, he’s bought a little motorised rotisserie from Ebay, and has dug a giant hole in our backyard. What was once our veggie patch is now our fire pit.
It’s actually happening.
Mr decided that before he attempted to feed 30 people using fire and a metal pole, he’d better practice first. So on Sunday we invited five of our buddies to join in the fun of our piggy practice run.
Mr assured me that I wouldn’t have to do a THING. Which was totally fine by me. The day began reasonably well, with Mr starting a very controlled fire in his DIY fire pit:
Confident that everything was under control, I pottered around inside for a while. When I next visited, the fire had grown considerably but was still manageable:
It wasn’t until Mr had filled our neighbours’ backyards with plumes of smoke that I intervened. Please note that there is no picture of the smoke plumes as I was too busy running around hissing ‘the neighbours will kill us! Put it out! PUT IT OUT!’.
We then decided to go with a safer, less smokey option:
Once the coals were ready we started to prep our piece-o-pig:
We purchased our pork from the Prahran Markets, and the butcher was most helpful. He prepped the meat beautifully:
And suggested we add lemon juice:
Salt:
And oil:
We then mounted mini piggy onto the rotisserie, carried it through the house in a sacrificial manner and put it on the fire.
And watched it turn
And turn
And turn!
The butcher suggested a four hour cooking time. During that time we neurotically adjusted the coals every five minutes:
And sat in the sun drinking G&Ts and Pinot Grigio. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon at ALL.
After an hour, piggy started to turn a nice shade of YUM:
After two hours, the smells that began to fill our backyard were unreal.
Mmmm…crackling
We decided that if we wanted to eat piggy after four hours, we would have to bring the bar down closer to the coals. After a little bit of improvising from Mr and our guests, we had success!
Nearly there:
Tadaaaaa!
Once the boys started carving, I had to get in pretty quickly with my camera!
Perfect.
Look at all that crackling!
The meat was so juicy and tender, and had that amazing smokey flavour that can only be achieved from hours over coals. The crackling was a little underdone, but after a few more minutes on the fire it was perfect.
All in all our rotisserie dress rehearsal was a huge success. A lot of fun too. Plus, we have LEFTOVERS. *happy dance*
The next challenge: a whole pig.
Stay tuned.
And pray for us.
Food gobbler. Wine lover. Kitteh keeper. Gen-Y. Fiancée. Twitter addict.
Fighting the war against Leggings As Pants one fashion victim at a time... 
Best opening sequence in a blog post ever.
Haha, I agree with Mary! What a different post!! LOL. You had my full attention the entire time :P I love this idea, what a fantastic way to feed a whole bunch of people with minimal effort!! -runs off to search ebay for rotisserie equipment-
That pig is hot! Literally. Nothing beats meat over charcoal
Oh my goodness I literally just wiped a drool off my laptop (TMI, I know). I didn’t realise my mouth had been open the whole time while reading this post, that’s a first! AMAZING practice run I’m so happy for you that it turned out perfect. Looking forward to the Mister’s birthday when you bring the real pig out. Can’t wait!! =D