Vietnamese Marinades for Pig Roast

[megwoo]

Hi All,

I'm hosting a pig roast in a few weeks and need help with marinade ideas. The plan is to roast a whole, wild boar (about 50 lbs) and then chop it up and serve it in banh mi sandwiches.

I'd like a Vietnamese style marinade, but the trick is I'm looking for one that doesn't contain sugar. I'm worried that roasting the pig for 7 hours with a sugared marinade will cause it to burn (if you don't think I need to worry about that, tell me that too, please).

So anyways, I did a trial marinade on some ribs last week but it was really boring (which is weird because it sounded good, but it was practically flavorless--maybe my proportions were off?):

2 stalks lemon grass

1/2 yellow onion

3 cloves garlic

2 T fish sauce (nam pla)

2 T soy sauce

1 T tablespoons rice vinegar

pinch of 5-spice

Any ideas will be GREATLY appreciated!! Thanks!

[snowangel]

I'm curious how well a marinade would penetrate a piece of meat with skin on.

Me, I'm rather partial to smoking (with wood chunks) meat naked, and augmenting with sauce. Especially pork.

[megwoo]

Yeah, that's a really good point. Maybe I should just do it naked and dress it up with sauce after it's cooked. Last year I did a Cuban marinade that didn't have much flavor--but the citrus in the marinade did weird things to the meat.

I'm using the same technique as I did last year:

http://iheartbacon.com/index.php?id=12

So the pig will be butterflied, but maybe I'll just stick with making slits in the meat side and stuffing it with garlic. Or would you even bother with that? How do you feel about brines?

Thanks for the feedback... I really appreciate it!

P.S. Please tell me more about wood chunks... what kind of wood? I did get applewood chips, but those will only last an hour tops!

Edited July 6, 2005 by megwoo (log)

[snowangel]

Brine, most definitely. Somewhere, at Varmints last Pig Picking, I think he devoted is bathtub to a nice brine for the lucky pig (a quick search revealed he did; click here).

Garlic cloves? Sure, why not.

One of the advantages of not going with a marinade (which I don't think do that much for pork or beef, quite frankly) is that you can offer several sauces. A Vietnamese/SouthEast Asian-inspired one, any one of the BBQ Sauces featured in RecipeGullet, or =Mark's absolutely fab South Carolina Barbecue Sauce. This offers more versitility, which can be helpful when planning sides.

I can get all kinds of wood chips, which I hate because they burn so fast, and seem like such a waste, so I usually get the mongo bags of hickory from Home Despot. Oh, I mean Home Depot. I think a southerner would probably prefer pecan, but I could be wrong.

[megwoo]

okay, you've sold me on the no marinade, just a brine. that picture is great!

why do they call it a pig picking? because everyone picks at it after it's done? i haven't heard that term over here in seattle...

thanks for the input!

[anzu]

Even though you've already decided against marinade, I thought it wouldn't hurt to add this.

My closest friend is Vietnamese, and had a whole roasted pig at her wedding reception. They did not marinade it.

So you have at least one authentic precedent backing up your decision as well.

[Adam Balic]

I'm curious how well a marinade would penetrate a piece of meat with skin on.

Me, I'm rather partial to smoking (with wood chunks) meat naked, and augmenting with sauce.  Especially pork.

←

I'm not sure that the idea of this type of marinade is to penetrate the flesh? Maybe just to flavour the outside? Anyway, I have been part of this type of pig marinade thing and what we did was to put them in a body bag (Veterinary department, during my Ph.D.) and roll it about in the cool room for a few days, Failing body bags you could use big tough bin liners.

What does brining add to the flavour of a spit roasted pig? Cooking pig/lamb like on a spit is done quite a bit in my family and the pig always comes out butter tender, so I can't see any advantage in the brining for tenderisation and does it not create a ham flavour, rather then a pork flavour?

Another possiblity is to use a mix like what was originally suggested to baste the meat as it cooks. I think a slighly smokie lemongrass flavour sounds interesting (But I would prefer a plain roast pig at the end of the day).

[chezcherie]

have you thought about injecting? when we roast a pig, we inject a mojo-type flavoring agent into the meat all over......mmmm, roast mojo pig!

[megwoo]

Anzu, Thanks for the back-up! A naked wild boar may be just the ticket...

Adam, a body bag??!! That's just a little too creepy for me. I was thinking I'd buy an $8 inflatable kiddie pool and take the pig for a swim in the brine. I haven't ever brined a whole pig, but I have brined pork chops before and they were delicious. The meat still had a nice texture, so it wasn't like ham, but it was very juicy and flavorful. Although, I wonder if you could over-brine and it would end up tasting like ham... That would be bad, so that's a good thing for me to consider.

Chezcherie, it never even crossed my mind to inject it! I've never done that before... can you give me some details? Like, what do you use to inject the marinade? It sounds very interesting.

Thanks!

[snowangel]

Read about The Injection Technique.