Pit Roast Pork

I have a friend, he and I like to undertake one project a summer, a beery time consuming project of 18th century labour levels for gain not commensurate with the effort. We’ve made salt, had clam bakes at the beach, fried chicken on a campfire and this year decided to pit roast some pork. It’s one of those things that if you wonder why, when you have a perfectly good working oven in the house, would you bother with all the effort suggests you should quit reading now.

He has a house south of Seattle and the yard is still in the process of being landscaped, so we thought we’d undertake the process prior to the gardeners finishing up, while pits can still be dug without spousal question. Sadly the gardeners were quicker than anticipated, so we made due with the situation we found ourselves in. We excavated eighteen inches from the backyard fire pit and lined it with rocks.


We had marinated a couple pork shoulders in achiote paste a couple days earlier, so all that was left after the hole was dug was to build a fire. A big fuck off fire. Not knowing what the hell we were doing we were resolute in our opinion that a big fire was better than a little fire. Primordial instincts were guiding the way, which was good, because we sure in hell had no idea what we were doing.

We let the wood burn down to embers, you could see the rocks lining the pit were hotter than Selma Hayek. By noon we had the interior ready for the pork. We decided after an AM ale that we should run to The Home Depot for some chicken wire to place under the banana leaf wrapped achiote marinated pork shoulder to make removing it from the hole easier. Smart crew. Hopped in the car, ran up to Home Depot. They had a whole aisle devoted to assorted and sundry types and styles of poultry fencing. I don’t know why, I just like the idea of poultry fencing being available so readily in a big box shop. Such a consumer driven society we have.

We layered in the chicken wire, the banana leaf wrapper encased pork, some fresh pine boughs, a couple wet towels and then the excavated dirt. We had nothing left to do with the rest of the day outside ride around in the boat, screw around on rope swings, drive golf balls into the lake, wake-board, swim, drink beer, make boat drinks around 3:30, and have another beer. Boring.

In truth we did the above and spent tons of time discussing how long the pork should be underground, what the chances of success versus failure were and what the temperature under there was.

We figured the odds of success were on our side, as man has been cooking in this style for thousands of years, and we’re a hell of  a lot more sophisticated than some no written language primitives. If they could manage, so could we. We would soon know.

~KT

First of a two part series.