Kalua Pig

Well, it took me awhile to get to this but here it is.....

Brian was invited by one of his coworkers to cook Kalua pig. This is a traditional Hawaiian pig roast. He went over Sat morning to start. They started with 7 live pigs over 500 lbs each. He had his first pig kill. It took all day for them to shave, gut and prep the pigs. The pigs weren't in the imu (underground oven) until 9pm. I worked on Sat and to be honest I didn't want to be there until the pigs were dead. So I went over around 4:30pm. When I got there they were cleaning the last pig. Then they took a break waiting for the rocks in the imu to cool down. The fire was blue and it needed to cool to an orange color.

When the fire was ready, they cut slits in the pigs so they cook evenly. Then they curl the pig onto itself and crack the back of the pig. The pigs are seasoned with Hawaiian salt and Shoyu (local sweetened soy sauce). Then they are wrapped in banana leaves. They put 4-5 hot rocks (special type of rock from a nearby river) in each pig. The pigs were then wrapped in wire and they fit all 7 pigs in the huge hole in the ground with two big pots of cooking pig innards. The imu had the wood on the bottom, banana stumps (from the trunk), then the pigs, then more stumps, more banana leaves, then covered with burlap sacks.

It was a big rush to get the dirt on the top after that for good reason. Apparently, the heat builds up in the pigs and the fat and grease can explode in flames. This is bad because it pops the entire load of pigs and they can shift. You don't want them to shift and end up in the dirt! So all the guys (except Brian), were standing on the edges of the burlap while they fired up the backend loader to get the dirt on top and KA BOOM! A pig popped! The burlap raised up and dropped down (about 6 inches). Everyone was now in a real hurry. It popped one more time before the dirt was all on. But it didn't look like the pigs moved.

Then we ate dinner...lots of good local food. Homemade dry ahi (smoked dry fish..like fish jerky), lau lau (meat cooked in taro leaves and coconut milk) and other things. We stayed until around midnight. Then the next day....

We arrived on Sun around 9:30am. People brought of course more food. Homemade Spam Musubi (which if you've seen my videos you know what that's about), and some really good corn bread that was more like cake. Then they opened up the imu. They hand shoveled the dirt off, pulled off the burlap, pulled off the banana leaves and stumps until they got to the pigs. Then 2 pigs in their wire cages were loaded per big metal tray. It took about 8 -10 guys to carry each tray to the tables. The kids pulled out the pig skulls because they hang them on the side of the shed and they try to pull out the pig teeth for necklaces.

Then it was the ladies turn. I was given a thick plastic apron to wear and we went to work shredding the meat. Our job is to remove all the little pieces of banana leaves, removed all the bones, remove any parts you don't want to eat (which honestly isn't much around here). I snuck the piece of pig palate into the trash along with some fat. We used the bones from the pig to shred the meat and also shred by hand. I used a couple ribs for awhile until someone loaned me their scapula. That worked much better. Basically we shredded and smashed the meat for 2.5 to three hours. We then added more salt and bagged it into gallon sized ziplocks. Then they loaded up the meat for future parties. Apparently, after all that work you don't even eat it!

My hands were so sore..but I didn't let on since I couldn't be the only one to stop! And I have strong dentist hands! After that we had more food..more lau lau and loco (stew from the innards). Brian had the loco, not me. He said it wasn't bad. I had chicken long rice (chicken in rice noodles with soy and ginger). It was good. We stayed for some beers and horseshoes. Then Susan and Boogie (the couple that invited us) snuck two bags of pig into our cooler.

Brian's had some, but to be honest I haven't had it yet. I just haven't had the appetite for it after shredding it for so long. Plus its really fatty. After the meat cooled in the fridge, we scrapped off the lard layer and we got about a half container of crisco off of it. Shockingly, in the three days following, two people who were there and took home a lot of pig had mini strokes.

It was an amazing experience. When I went to work and was telling people about it.... they were really impressed. Most of them have never seen, or participated in what we did (and they were born here). I will email some pics since I can't post them all here.

Today we went on another hike... I will do another posting for it though.