A few hours later, everything looks perfect.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
3 comments:
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ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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The swineapple was quite delish. The bacon browned up on it a bit more after this pic. This photo was taken about 45 minutes before I took it off the smoker. I didn't get additional photos because I had a crowd of people watching and waiting to have some.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, the dish was a success. The bacon on the outside was crispy and nicely flavored. It had the smokey flavor one would expect with a heavy dose of sweet citrus - due to the basting with pineapple juice. The swineapple carved into nice rings. The pineapple was great. It was juicy, and a little caramelized on the outside (even under the bacon wrap. The pork was succulent and infused with the dry rub seasoning and pineapple flavor.
If I have any complaints they are these two. 1) The dry rub on the inside got a little gritty. The confluence of dry rub, pork fat (of which there wasn't too much - but when it has no where to go it just sits there), and juice from the pineapple mixed together to create a layer of grit on the inside of the swineapple that took away from the texture of the dish as a whole. Not sure exactly how you'd prevent this in the future - except to cut a tiny drain hole in the bottom. But a drain hole may not be good for the consistency inside as it would let in too much smoke and air and dry out your meat. Another alternative would be to prop up the bottom of the pineapple so that the fat would run out of the top where you did the stuffing. I'll have to think on this some. 2) The second problem is yield. This dish doesn't yield as much as I thought it would. I should have known this given that I can see the size of the pineapple and how much meat was stuffed into it. But I had a hungry crowd and we ran out very quickly and had to go around and steal some to more equitably distribute it. If it had only been my family, we would have been okay. But it wasn't good for the group we had. Also, the bottom of the pineapple was sort of "waste" in the sense that it didn't give much fruit and had no pork in it either.
All in all I'd do this again, for a smaller group.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteYeah, a single pineapple, cut into fairly thick rings, doesn't look as though it'd yield that many rings. How many people were at the shindig?
I know this goes against the spirit of prepping and cooking a swineapple, but would you consider prepping and cooking the pork stuffing separately, then stuffing it inside the hollowed-out pineapple at the end of the cooking process? (Or, if cooking a hollow pineapple presents its own problems, leave the fruit un-cored until the very end, core it, then stuff it.)
Based on what you've said, I think my own variation would involve slicing the pork thinly, the way Koreans eat grilled pork, then lathering the meat up with some sweet-and-sour Asian sauce that matches well with pineapples, then either stuffing that into the fruit before cooking the pineapple or stuffing it at the end, after cooking the pork separately.
Anyway, your insights and observations are very helpful. Alas, if I'm to be realistic, I won't be able to do this without access to a rooftop and a grill.