The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Lechón asado
Cuba
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 5 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Lechón asado
Cuba's Nochebuena centrepiece, caja china, about 4 to 5 hours
Ingredients
- juice of 5 sour orange
- 4 heads garlic
- to taste salt
- 2 tsp pepper
- 2 tsp oregano
- 2 tbsp cumin
- 1 whole pig
Method
- Blend sour orange, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano and cumin into an adobo paste.
- Work the paste deep into the meat through punctures across the whole pig.
- Marinate, refrigerated, for over twenty four hours so the seasoning genuinely fixes rather than sitting on the surface.
- Cook the whole pig in a caja china over charcoal heat applied from above for roughly four to five hours, until the skin is crisp and the meat moist throughout.
Notes
The caja china became a Cuban Nochebuena tradition in the 1950s alongside Chinese immigration to the island.
What a modern chef changes
Big Green Egg as caja china analogue, sous vide shoulder
Rung 02, 05
Method
- For a reader without a caja china, run the Big Green Egg very hot and direct, with the pork positioned skin-side toward the heat rather than the egg's usual indirect low-and-slow mode, as the closer analogue to the caja china's actual mechanism, fast top-down heat, rather than a French substitution laid over the top of it.
- Cook the leaner cuts of the shoulder sous vide to a precise, moist doneness first.
- Finish only the skin under the Big Green Egg's hottest direct heat for the crackling, so the meat beneath is never at risk of drying out while the skin catches up.
- Grind the adobo's cumin fresh and strain the finished mojo through the chinois for a clear, unclouded marinade rather than a gritty one.