Kitchen Secrets with Our Cuban Chef – Lechón Asado

Lechón asado is a pork shoulder split open, packed with raw garlic, soaked overnight in sour orange and then left in a low oven until the meat slumps off the bone and the skin turns to glass. It is what Cuban families cook when more people are coming than there are chairs to sit them in.

Nothing about it is quick. The marinade wants a night. The roast wants most of a day. What you get back is meat you can pull apart with a fork under a sheet of crackling that cracks out loud when you press it, plus a tray of garlicky juices for everything else on the plate.

The version below is a shoulder in a home oven, which is how most people cook it when it is not a holiday. The seasoning is the same one that goes on a whole pig.

Why the pig owns Nochebuena

Pigs came to the Caribbean on Spanish ships in the 1490s and were established on Cuba within a generation. They ate what fell from the trees, they multiplied, and they became the meat a household could raise for itself. Slow fire was the way to cook them, and it still is.

The method is older than the Spanish. The English word barbecue comes through Spanish from the Taíno word barbacoa, a wooden frame set over a low fire, which is the same principle as a whole pig cooking for hours a good distance above coals. What the Spanish brought was the seasoning: bitter orange trees, garlic, oregano, cumin, salt. Bitter orange, naranja agria, is too sharp to drink and exactly right for a marinade. Crushed together with garlic it becomes mojo, and mojo goes on the yuca and the plantains as well as the pork.

Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, is the meal of the year, and the pig sits at the centre of it. In Cuba that means a pit in the yard lined with stones and coals, or a whole animal turned slowly on a green stick, lit early so it is ready late. In Tampa and across Florida a lot of families use a wooden roasting box lined with metal, coals piled on the lid. The oven keeps everything that actually matters: garlic driven into the meat, acid on it overnight, long low heat, and one hard blast at the end to lift the skin.

Ingredients

• 1 bone-in, skin-on pork picnic shoulder, 8 to 9 lb / 3.6 to 4 kg
• 2 heads of garlic, about 20 cloves, peeled
• 2 tbsp coarse salt for the mojo, plus 1 tbsp for the skin
• 2 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 cups sour orange juice (naranja agria), or 1 1/3 cups fresh orange juice mixed with 2/3 cup fresh lime juice
• 1 large white onion sliced thin, plus a second onion for serving
• 1/3 cup olive oil for the mojo, plus 2 tbsp for the skin
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 cup water for the roasting tin

How to make lechón asado

1. Dry the pork and lay it skin side down. Cut four or five slits into the meat, each about 2 inches deep and wide enough to take a finger, keeping the knife well away from the skin. Turn it over and score the skin in a crosshatch about 1 inch apart, cutting through skin and fat but stopping short of the meat.
2. Crush the garlic with the 2 tbsp salt and the peppercorns in a mortar until it turns into a rough, sticky paste, then work in the oregano and cumin. Stir in the sour orange juice, the 1/3 cup olive oil and the bay leaves. Set 1/2 cup of this mojo aside in the refrigerator for serving; that portion must never touch the raw meat.
3. Push the garlic solids from the remaining mojo deep into the slits with your fingers, then rub what is left across the meat side. Put the pork in a large bag or a deep dish, pour the liquid around it rather than over the skin, tuck the sliced onion underneath and refrigerate 12 to 24 hours, turning once. Keep the skin side up and out of the liquid for the last few hours.
4. Take the pork out 1 hour before it goes in the oven and heat the oven to 300°F / 150°C. Set the pork skin side up on a rack in a roasting tin, pour the marinade and onion into the tin below it and add the water. Wipe the skin dry with paper towel and rub the remaining 1 tbsp salt into the scored lines.
5. Tent foil over the tin, clear of the skin, and roast about 5 hours, basting the meat sides every hour with liquid from the tin. Never baste the skin. Add a splash of water if the tin looks like going dry; the juices should be simmering, not smoking.
6. Take the foil off, wipe any condensation off the skin, and keep roasting, 45 to 90 minutes more, until a thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone reads 195 to 200°F / 90 to 93°C and the shoulder bone turns freely when you twist it. Those numbers matter more than the clock, because no two shoulders cook alike.
7. Raise the oven to 450°F / 230°C. Brush the skin with the 2 tbsp olive oil and roast uncovered 20 to 30 minutes, turning the tin once, until the skin blisters, lifts away in ridges and goes the colour of dark honey. Stay in the kitchen for this part; it moves from crackling to burnt in about three minutes.
8. Cut the crackling off in sheets with kitchen scissors and leave it uncovered on a board; foil over crisp skin softens it. Rest the meat 30 minutes under a loose tent of foil, then skim the fat off the pan juices, pull or slice the meat and break the crackling back over the top. Slice the second onion into thin rings, scatter them on and pour the reserved cold mojo across just before it goes to the table.

Chef’s notes

• Sour orange is acid, and past 24 hours it starts to cook the outside of the meat. The surface goes soft and stringy and the roast never recovers. Overnight is right. A weekend is not.
• Skin crisps only if it is dry. Keep it above the marinade, wipe it before it goes in and never baste it. Anything wet that lands on the skin has to boil off before the skin can blister, and by the time that happens the meat underneath is overcooked.
• Cut the slits from the meat side only. If the knife goes through into the fat, juice runs out onto the skin all through the roast and you lose the crackling in exactly that spot.
• Cook to temperature and to feel, not to a schedule. Below about 190°F the collagen has not melted and the meat slices cleanly instead of pulling apart. If it fights the fork it needs more time, not a hotter oven.

What goes around it on the table

Rice and beans first: congrí, or black beans over white rice with a spoonful of the pan juices. Boiled yuca dressed with hot mojo. Ripe plantains fried until the edges caramelise. Bread on the table for the juice, and a plate of raw onion sliced thin, which cuts the fat better than anything cooked does. Keep the skimmed roasting liquid where people can reach it.

The next day is half the reason for cooking something this size. Cold lechón on Cuban bread with a little mustard is breakfast. Chopped, pressed with ham, Swiss and pickle, it becomes a sandwich cubano. That is the same idea behind our roast pork sandwich: slow-roasted pork and onions, pressed on Cuban bread.

If you would rather we ran the oven

Feeding a crowd is where this stops being a recipe and starts being a project. Order a whole pork shoulder, marinated in garlic and sour orange, to carve at your own table, or put it on a catering tray with rice and beans for a bigger group. Everything that belongs beside it is on the menu: the yuca, the plantains, the congrí, the pastelitos to finish. Order online for pickup, or call us at (813) 450-2176 and we will work out the quantities with you.