Musubi Makers
Other Hawaiian dishes

Kalua pork

Pork shoulder cooked long and slow with Hawaiian salt until it pulls apart in soft, smoky shreds. At a real luau it comes out of an underground oven. At home you can get very close with your oven or a slow cooker.

smoky, salty, falls apart

What it is

Kalua pork is a big cut of pork, traditionally a whole pig, seasoned simply with Hawaiian sea salt and cooked for hours until it is meltingly tender, then shredded. It tastes smoky and salty and clean, with no heavy sauce. You eat it with rice, in a sandwich, or piled next to cabbage.

A short history

The word kalua means to cook in an imu, the underground oven. You dig a pit, heat rocks in a fire, layer in banana and ti leaves, set the salted pig on top, cover it all, and let it steam and smoke for the better part of a day. Polynesian voyagers brought both the pigs and the earth-oven method to Hawaii more than a thousand years ago.

Pork carried a lot of meaning. Under the old kapu system, women were not allowed to eat it, along with certain other foods, until 1819, when King Kamehameha II set those laws aside. Today kalua pig is the centerpiece of the luau, the thing everyone lines up for.

How to make it at home

You cannot dig an imu in the backyard on a Tuesday, so this uses the oven and a little liquid smoke to get that pit-cooked flavor. If you can find ti or banana leaves, wrap the pork in them for the real thing.

Kalua pork, home style

Serves 8, mostly hands-off

You need

  • 4 to 5 lb pork shoulder (pork butt)
  • 1.5 tbsp Hawaiian sea salt or coarse sea salt
  • 1 tbsp liquid smoke
  • Ti or banana leaves, if you can get them

Steps

  1. Pierce the pork all over with a knife. Rub it with the salt and the liquid smoke, getting into the cuts.
  2. Wrap it in ti or banana leaves if you have them, then in foil. Set it in a roasting pan.
  3. Roast at 300 degrees for about 5 to 6 hours, until a fork twists easily and it falls apart. A slow cooker on low for 8 to 10 hours works too.
  4. Shred the pork with two forks. Toss it with the juices in the pan and a little more salt to taste.

Serve it with rice and mac salad, or try spam musubi for a smaller bite.

Where I read up on this