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Went very well in tough conditions!
Key was preparation and a little experience. I'd done a whole pig only once before in this thing, 6 years ago. So I refamilarized myself with the cooker, cleaned it, made sure we had all the stuff we needed, etc beforehand. Tried to get a pig from the local hipster organic butchers but they didn't call me back in time so I would up at a local Polish butcher.
Last time we went with a 55 pounder, and I had to break his rear legs to fit him in the box and we also wound up throwing away a lot of meat. So shot for a 40-45 pounder, the Poles had a 39.5 pounder on hand and I went with that. Incidentally, pork prices have skyrocketed since 2005, the one we bought then came to (I think) $85 total, this one was $4 per pound or around $160 total. The Poles offered to smoke it for me and looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I wanted it raw. It smelled like the place when I brought it home anyway.
The pig was "hog tied" and as a result fit in the bottom shelf of the fridge in a garbage bag on Friday nite. I mixed up a "criollo mojo" marinade of orange juice, lemon juice, water, salt, a head of garlic, cumin and oregano, let it sit for an hour, strained it then injected it into the meat with a vet's syringe every few inches according to a recipe and let it marinate overnight.
Took him out of the fridge around 11:30 yesterday morning and let him achieve room temperature while I started coals in the chimney lighter. I clipped the ties, moistened his skin with salty water, then salted the skin, and laid him on the rack. He was split crotch to throat but I had to hack a little higher into his sternum to get him properly splayed. By now I had a lot of burning coals, so I laid him in the box on the grease tray, covered the box with the charcoal tray and dumped the charcoal on top, eventually getting 14 pounds spread out evenly on top.
From there, I added 8-10 pounds of charcoal for each of the next three hours. This is the best part of the caja china, there really isn't anything to do but drink beverages and sniff. At 3.5 hours, I had a friend put on a pair of BBQ gloves and help me move off the charcoal tray to dump the ash and flip the pig. This where my experience was helpful, I remember that the ash flew everywhere including all over the pig last time so I covered him in foil when we dumped the ashes. I also remembered to have a safe place to dump them so I didn't set my lawn on fire this time.
The other challenge this time around was rain, but we solved that just by leaning a patio umbrella over the box, it blocked most of it. We were fortunate that we had a window of no rain just when the thing came off so we could serve it off a table in the yard. It started in heavy again after everyone had eaten so I had to clean up in the rain but no biggie. Wound up with 4 big freezer bags of meat scraps and bones to boil down for soups
I let it cook the skin side for about 30 minutes and should have left it on for longer than that but people were getting hungry, so we took it off. The meat was super tender and juicy, especially around the shoulder/neck (the "Boston Butt"). You could barely get a rib because it all fell off the bone (plus they were small ribs, relatively: One guest remarked that although it was a small pig it weighed the same as her 5 year old son also at the party).
Another issue I had the first time I tried this was that I had no clue what to do once the thing came out of the box. This time I was a little more familiar where the different cuts were, though got some help when my brother carved out the entire loin than cut from that, rather than everything off the carcass all haphazardly as I would have done. Finally another guy suggested the still-mushy skin could be wrapped in foil and thrown back onto the still-burning coals, we did that with most of the skin, experimenting for the right amount of crispiness. These rinds turned out so friggin good I sawed off the ears and did the same thing to them, ate a whole one myself.
Wifey Bucket ordered rice, beans and tostones from a local peruvian chicken place to accompany the meal, everyone brought a lot of beer, and a good time was had by all. I only have a few pics below, I'll have to swipe some from my friends to post later.
Hogtied and kinda ugly
In the box just before I closed the lid (photo framing by Lunchpail)
~3.5 hours later, he's cooked but needs skin-crisping on the other side
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