Kalua Pork

Wow, this pork is GOOD. It’s smoky and salty, and I love it! It’s made with a few very simple ingredients: pork, salt, liquid smoke and banana leaves. The hardest part about this recipe is finding the banana leaves. I learned that they are available in most Asian markets, and they come fresh or frozen. I was in Maui in November of 2012 and had kalua pork for the first time and thought it was delicious. Since then, I have done some research and discovered that the traditional way to cook this pork is in an “imu”, a Hawaiian underground oven.

For us home cooks who don’t want to dig up the back yard, there is a much simpler way. During my research I discovered that there are the same four ingredients in most of the recipes I found. The only difference is how much salt and liquid smoke is used. For this recipe, I used 2 tablespoons of each (salt and liquid smoke) and was very happy with the results.

When I tasted the pork in Maui for the first time, it was served with a mango barbecue sauce. I wanted to come up with something similar and found some papaya habanero preserves in the refrigerator that I used for my barbecue sauce. I have also included that recipe below.

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Ingredients

1 4-5 Pound Pork shoulder
2 Tablespoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Liquid Smoke
1 Large Banana Leaf
Hawaiian BBQ Sauce (see recipe below)

Note

For this recipe I cooked two 4 1/2 pound pork shoulders with bone in. After roasting for 8 hours there was about 6 pounds of usable pork.

Directions


Cut small slits about a half inch deep into the pork shoulder. Then rub salt and liquid smoke all over pork shoulder.

Wrap the pork shoulder with banana leaves and place in a roasting pan

Cover with aluminum foil and place in refrigerator for at least four hours. Remove pork from refrigerator at least one hour before cooking, Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Roast pork in oven for about 8 hours. Remove from oven and allow roast to cool, about 1 hour.

Shred pork and serve.