I was going to do a crown roast but took advice that it wasn’t going to go far enough for 20 guests, so it would have been fiddly to do two or more and get them timed ok.
so I opted for the easy way out and went for the old Xmas favourite, the loin roast. Biggest one I’ve cooked, 4.5kg and just fit in the Weber. Yes I did take it out the plastic before cooking!
Xmas morning I opened it up, patted dry and pricked it with my new skin pricker thingamajig ($2 bucks on AliExpress!!)
Then very heavily caked it with ground table salt and then put the same amount of bicarb on top as well. It went back into the fridge for 2 hours.
after two hours I gave it quick rinse under the tap and a wipe down with apple cider vinegar to neutralise the bicarb. Then re-salted the pork and seasoned with some garlic granules, onion powder and cracked pepper.
because it was so big I decided on 94 heat beads, split between two sides. I blitzed them with the heat gun to get them screaming hot then put the loin on with some apple wood chunks on the grille.
Popped it on a roasting rack with al foil under to protect the bottom from the coals.
I wanted to get it to 62c so took it off at 58c to allow for some carry over cooking and stripped the crackling off straight away. Took 1:40 which was pretty close to my predicted 1:50. It was the best crackling I’ve ever done, guests were pleased.
Meat was really moist. Got lots of comments from guests which is always nice to receive.