I suppose this is alright to post here. This is my first youtube video. It’s from a few years ago when we cooked a whole pig in a home made caja china box. It was a great day. Enjoy.
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Thanks for sharing the slide show. That was a lot of work, but the pig looked fabulous.
How much time did you use to construct the ‘box’?
How long did you cook the pig? We are thinking of either roasting a pig or a lamb next spring, but we would rather rent the equipment.
It took less than a day to stack the blocks for the roaster. My neighbor built the metal coal tray because he had the welding equipment and experience. That took a couple of days.
We live on a dirt road and this cook was to celebrate everyone pitching in cash and time to regrade the road.
The pig cooked for 9 hours. Longer than what I’d read it would take. I think it was supposed to be 5 hours. The pig was 36 degrees when it went in and I think that contributed to the long cook.
It was delicious. What is sad is I haven’t done it since. You need a rather large gathering if you’re going to cook a whole pig. 
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I’m in.
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2 votes.
I’m pretty sure that it took so long to cook because your pit was so large, and didn’t look like it has any insulation. So the coals on top had to heat an enormous mass of concrete blocks before the pig even started to cook. Probably 2-3 hours just to get to temp. I’ve used several sizes of the commercial ones, and made one myself pretty easily with plywood, insulation, and thin gauge sheet metal and it took less than two hours to make. Portable and no cinder blocks. They cook relatively fast since it steams the meat, although it is not a cooking style I care for as much as cooking over coals and with smoke, on a rotisserie, or even a rack.
That could be the case, though my temp probe had the internal oven temp at 375 shortly after putting the lid of coals in place.
I used cinder blocks because I wanted a more permanent fixture. I have plans to cement them in place, but I have a lot of plans. And then as I said I haven’t used it since. Someday…
