Well, if you are hoping for a meal that takes just a few minutes or even a couple of hours to cook then you will be in for a bit of a shock, because hog roast is just not that sort of meal, as you probably already knew. After all, if you are hoping to have a catering solution that offers some of the very best in taste and flavour then you really can only expect that from a meat that needs a long time to cook, and that is certainly what you will get with hog roast. In short, each regular sized hog roast takes around six hours to cook to perfection , and there are some very good reasons why it takes so long.
Hog roast is a very old and traditional dish that really does delve back into medieval British history. Originally this would have been cooked over a huge hearth and enjoyed by some of society’s more privileged characters but times have certainly moved on since then and now most of us can enjoy the great taste of hog roast. We do not know how long a hog roast took to cook back in those days but we feel it must have been just as long, if not longer.
Of course, medieval folk did not have the secret weapon that the twenty first century hog roast caterer has at their disposal and that is the hog roast machine. This is the secret to delivering a superbly cooked pig every time and it also ensures that presentation is excellent, but it does not really help speed up the process at all. In fact, you don’t really want it to be a fast process at all, because all the taste and flavour that you get from a wonderful hog roast is partly due to the fantastic slow roasting process. Slow roasting is well known by all chefs as the optimum way of cooking a piece of meat as it really allows the meat to retain its flavour and maintain that all important succulence. A big joint of meat has to have a long time cooking but this can be detrimental to the overall taste unless you know what you are doing. This is why the hog roast caterer will also look out for a pig that has just the right levels of fat. This fat serves a really key dual purpose. Firstly, fat adds valuable extra moistness and flavour to the meat, which as we all know is very important but it also acts as a protective barrier. Because the meat needs to cook for so long, the fat can help prevent those tasty juices from escaping. What that means is that the meat can stay deliciously succulent right through to being served. That juicy flavour is a hallmark of hog roast and is what makes those six long hours of cooking time so worthwhile. This is why it takes a while to cook!