Roast suckling pig in the oven recipe
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Total: 2 h Diners: 6
Although Christmas Eve menus are becoming more and more varied, if there is a classic in Spain for the first family dinner of Christmas that is, with permission of the lamb, the suckling pig.
Maybe less frequent on the coast than inland, but even so if we were to do a survey it is very likely that the dish most often eaten on the night of December 24 in Spain would be a succulent oven-roasted suckling pig.
Although this rare year of pandemic, has multiplied the supply of restaurants that cook it to send it to your home so that you only have to give the final touch in the oven, there are still many who each year review the recipe to cook it at home.
Choosing a suckling pig to roast in the oven at home
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It is very likely that on some occasion you have bought a supposed half suckling pig weighing about 5 kg and when you went to prepare the ultra-secret recipe of your family, the result had nothing to do. Obviously, an animal with that weight is no longer a suckling pig but a piglet that, no matter how tasty it is, will not have the texture or flavor of a tender suckling pig.
For starters, if you can’t go to a trusted butcher specializing in suckling pig or tostón which is another way of calling the suckling pig and you have to get it in a neighborhood supermarket or otherwise, take note of what we have to tell you.
The first thing you may notice is that there are apparently equal suckling pigs but with very different prices. For example, in Mercadona you can find legs and shoulders of suckling pig for a price that does not reach 10 euros per kilo and usually weigh about a kilo. This means that the animal is too big for what a suckling pig should be, so it is cheaper. Also, if you look at the origin it is very likely to have Germanic origin.
The best suckling pigs are the smallest, the animal should not exceed five and a half kilos, that is, once cleaned of all viscera, the weight of the ideal suckling pig should be about 4 kilos.
In terms of origin, when choosing a suckling pig you have to take into account that the Segovian suckling pig is the best quality you can find. Since 2002 there is a guarantee mark that certifies their authenticity. This means that they are also the most expensive, and can cost around 22 euros per kilo. Today, thanks to online stores you can buy all you need regardless of where you live, because in a matter of hours you can receive it at home refrigerated and in optimal conditions.
In an intermediate price range you can also find piglets bred and born in Spain that also have great quality.
How to make oven-roasted suckling pig
The most important thing when preparing a successful oven-roasted suckling pig is to make sure that what we are buying is really a suckling pig, that is, a baby pig that has only been fed with milk. For that, we insist again, we have to check that our whole and clean suckling pig does not exceed 4 kg in weight, because if it is larger it will be a pig that has already begun to feed on other things and neither the texture of the meat nor the flavor will be those of what is known as suckling pig.
Ingredients
Suckling pig, whole, half or leg or shoulder Fatty salt Aromatic herbs (bay leaf, thyme, rosemary,…) Garlic, 5 or 6 cloves
Roasts usually command respect, but once you are clear about the times and temperature, you only have to watch the video to see that preparing a great roast suckling pig at home is extremely simple.
Step 1
Salt the suckling pig generously with coarse salt inside and out. In a deep dish we put two or three centimeters of water, add some aromatic herbs such as bay leaves, a few crushed cloves of garlic and a few sprigs of rosemary. We place a metal rack over the dish and on it our suckling pig skin side down, taking care that the suckling pig does not touch the water.
Step 2
Preheat the oven to 160 ºC. With the oven at 160 ºC we introduce the suckling pig with the skin down on the rack as we have indicated in the previous section. We let it roast for 45 minutes or until we check that the meat has turned a bright white color. If the suckling pig is one of the larger ones we will need a little more time, in fact, in the case of the video, which was a large shoulder, we had to leave it for an hour so that the meat had that white color we are looking for.
Step 3
We remove from the oven and carefully turn our suckling pig over to place it skin side up.strong>skin side up, put it back in the oven at 160 ºC and bake for another 45 minutes. During this phase, we must be attentive to water it with the juice from the pan every 15 minutes to prevent it from drying out.
Step 4
After this time, raise the temperature to 190°C. pick the skin in several places and leave it for another 20 minutes to toast the skin and crisp it. During this time we must watch it often so that it does not burn. If we want the skin to be shinier, at the time of pricking the skin, we brush it with lard or olive oil, although it is an optional step that will not affect the texture or flavor, only the visual appearance.
Step 5
To serve the roast suckling pig we have just made, we prepare a sauce with the juices that remain in the dish, strain them, transfer them to a saucepan and put them on the heat to reduce them until we have a consistent sauce that we will serve in a separate sauceboat.
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