Review of our Memorial Day Pig Roasts

10 years ago I had the brilliant idea to cook a pig in the ground like they do in Polynesian and Caribbean countries.  However I had never done this before and only talked to a couple of neighbors that seemed know what they were doing for research.  So I dug a hole in my yard 3-4 feet deep and started a fire and burned logs, wood and anything else I could find the get a bed of coals.  I then put some rocks in with the coals and kept feeding the fire for a few more hours.  After the fire was hot, the rocks were hot I put a 25lb pork roast completely wrapped in aluminum foil into the hole and covered it with dirt.  I had friends over, my cousins Jolynn and Angie came with their husbands and we dug it up.  Everybody brought side dishes to go along with the main course.  We pulled it out of the ground it was hot and steaming.  The meat was cooked however because I wrapped it so tightly in foil it basically steamed it inside the foil.  There was no extra special flavor it was simply large chunk of steamed pork. 

We ate it and acted like it was good.  However we all new, it could have been much better.  The next year undeterred by our previous experience we decided to make it a Ward Memorial Day Party.  I was Bishop by this time so getting this on the Calendar was pretty easy.  We also got some expert help in form of a member in the other ward from New Zealand who had done this many times before.  It came out beautifully, the flavor was great, the roasting was a success and it was all in all a huge hit.  Over the next 10 years this has grown to be a ward tradition that is by far the most popular event of the year. 

We have had a couple of hiccups along the way.  I listened to some bad advice 4 years ago and the pork was not cooked because we changed the way we heated the rocks.  After that we have stayed with the tried and true methods. 

I wanted to include some photos of our event from this year’s Memorial Day Pig Roast.  Good times for everybody involved…except the pig.

The first thing we do is to dig a hole that is about 3 feet deep, 3 feet wide and 6 feet long.  It looks like a shallow grave.  We then pile the bottom with large valcanic rocks then stick 3-4 large propane torches under the rocks.

 We keep the torches on the rocks until they are all glowing red

After the rocks are red hot we will spread them out with a shovel then dump wood chips on the so they smoke and cover the entire mess with burlap sacks that have been soaking in water.  We take the pig or roasts that are sealed in cotten bags then wrapped in chicken wire and place it on top of the burlap.  Then wrap the rocks and pig in more burlap.

This is actually a lot harder than it looks.  You are standing over rocks that are close to 900 degree the wood chips are smoking and the burlaps is steaming.  It is hot and hard to see or breath.  Once you get the pig on the rocks and covered in burlap as quickly as possible we cover everything with about 2 feet of dirt.

We serve lunch at 2:00 in the afternoon and start the cooking process at 5:00am.  We had the hole dug by the boy scouts a few days before.  The preparations and heating of the rocks has become a party separate from the actual Memorial Day celebration.  We have breakfast light fires with small flame throwers and activly look for ant hills to shut down.  We normally have anywhere from 4-12 people show up just for this part.  It is actually my favorite part of the day.