Pernil Picnic Roast

Pernil Picnic Roast – Pernil you ask? It’s a method of cooking pork in Caribbean countries from Brazil to Puerto Rico. I adapted this BBQ recipe from a Dominican recipe. The typical ingredients of pernil, other than pork, is garlic, pepper, and oregano. Some prefer lots of citric action as well. I chose to go with the acid myself. Some argue that true pernil is done with a rear leg of the pig, but in recent years, it has been popularized using pork shoulder or in this case a picnic roast.  Why a picnic roast? I almost always use a picnic roast when I’m developing a pulled pork recipe for two very big reasons.

1 – Because I can get a boneless picnic for about $8 rather than buying a whole pork shoulder for about $22:

2 – I can also cook this picnic roast in about 3 hours as opposed to six plus for a full shoulder. You could just as easily do this with a pork shoulder or pork butt, but adjust cooking times accordingly.

The first part of the recipe requires making Sazon Dominicano which translates roughly to Dominican Seasoning or as I like to call it, salsa. More on that in a minute.

Sazon Dominicano Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup red onion
• 2 jalepeno peppers, seeded and the white flesh removed (use Scotch Bonnets to kick it up the heat)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp oregano (I used dried, but ground would’ve been better)
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1/2 medium size tomato
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and white flesh removed
• 1 tbsp scallions/green onions
• 1 tbsp fresh celery

Sazon Dominicano Directions:

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blend till smooth:

And when you’re done you have salsa:

I thought there would be more to it, and looked at the original recipe that made about a half gallon of the stuff. I obviously cut back the amounts and tweaked it, leaving out both green peppers and cilantro. Not a cilantro fan and I figure I would go with ripe peppers (red) rather than the green. But green pepper and cilantro would only make it more like salsa. At this point, I wasn’t all that geeked about where this recipe was going.

Pernil Picnic Roast Marinade Ingredients:

• 1 cup of Sazon Dominicano, divided
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp of dried oregano
• 1/2 cup coarse salt]
• Juice of 1 lime, divided
• Juice of 1 orange, divided

Combine 1/2 cup of the sazon… er, salsa, black pepper, salt and juice of 1/2 lime and 1/2 orange in a bowl:

One of the characteristics of pernil is that the meat must be scored thoroughly or be pierced many times with a long thin knife. Well, I have a boneless picnic roast that is held together by a net so scoring won’t really work:

As you can see, it has a nice fat cap on one side as well as one of those silly little thermometers. Remove the thermometer. You can also see that there are some gaps and crevices with are inherent to this cut which should only enhance the flavor. It is also the reason for the netting as it holds the meat together into a consistent shape which allows for even grilling:

Make sure to go all over, side to side, and top to bottom with the long, thin knife:

The next step is to slather the roast with the marinade making sure to get into all those slits I just put into the roast. But that turns out to be not so easy. Then it occurred to me that I had something that I could use to get into those crevices with ease:

Then place the picnic roast in a resealable plastic bag, add the other half of the salsa, juice of half a lime and half an orange:

Marinade for two hours to two days. Normally, I would say two hours to overnight, but I had sick kids and wasn’t able to grill it the following day. I had to do it two days later.

Remove from the marinade:

How to Grill a Pernil Picnic Roast

Set up the grill for Indirect grilling with a plate setter like in my kamado style grill or with coals and smoke wood on one side and nothing on the other. Place the meat on the side with no heat, or in this case, over the place setter and squeeze a half a lime over the top:

Target temperature inside the grill is 300F-325F with a cook time of 3-4 hours.

I used cherry wood for the smoke. But if you don’t have access to cherry and want to know what smoke woods pair well with this meat, this list should help. 

At the 90 minute mark, the pernil picnic roast is a little over 100 degrees internal temperature and looks like this. I gave it another shower of juice from half a lime:

Target internal temperature for the picnic roast is 203F-205F.

After 3 hours and we’ve broken 180, the pernil picnic roast looks like this:

At 203F, remove the pernil roast from the grill and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes or wrap in foil, wrap in a towel and place in an empty cooler or off microwave for up to two hours before slicing or pulling:

I sliced it in half to get a good view of the smoke ring and the injected salsa:

The slicing was to show the penetration, but sadly, I didn’t grab any pulling pics. Pull the meat to make pulled pork and dust with your favorite BBQ rub and work it through the meat.

Pernil Picnic Roast Recap

So what is the verdict? Honestly, the pernil roast was really good. I did not expect it to be good at all. Sazon dominicano was nothing more than salsa, but the flavors of salsa are pretty iconic and combined with the freshness of the citrus turned out to be pretty damn good. Next time though, I might just buy some good salsa, puree it to get it into my injector and save the time of the cutting and chopping. Sure the salsa I made was uber fresh, but I’m not sure how important that is when it is used as a marinade for two days. I wasn’t dipping chips into it, I was using it to marinade a picnic roast before grilling it.

If you have any questions about the grilling recipe above feel free to comment below or shoot me an email.

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Print Recipe

Pernil Picnic Roast

A pernil picnic roast, marinated for two days, and smoked for three hours on a kamado grill to produce an amazing pulled pork.

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time3 hours hrs

Total Time3 hours hrs 20 minutes mins

Course: Entree, Main Course

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Barbecue, BBQ, Latin American, Pulled Pork, South American

Keyword: Akorn, Barbecue Pork, BBQ Pork, Kamado, Kamado Grill, Pernil, Pernil Picnic Roast, Pork Butt, Pork Shoulder, Pulled Pork, Sazon Dominicano, Smoked Pork

Servings: 8 People

Ingredients

Salsa Ingredients

• ½ cup red onion
• 2 jalapeño pepper seeded and the white flesh removed (use Scotch Bonnets to kick it up the heat)
• 4 clove garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp oregano (I used dried, but ground would've been better)
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• ½ medium size tomato
• 1 red bell pepper stemmed, seeded, and white flesh removed
• 1 tbsp green onion
• 1 tbsp celery

Marinade Ingredients

• 1 cup salsa divided
• 1 tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• ½ cup coarse salt
• 2 tbsp lime juice (from 1 lime), divided
• ¼ to ⅓ cup orange juice (from 1 orange), divided

Instructions

Salsa Directions

• Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blend till smooth

Marinade Directions

• Put 1/2 cup salsa in a bowl along with the juice of 1/2 orange, 1/2 lime, black pepper, oregano, and salt
• Fill a meat injector and proceed to inject the meat
• Place the roast in a resealable plastic bag, add the other half of the salsa and the juice of half an orange and lime
• Refrigerate for 2 hours to 2 days
• Prepare the grill for two zone grilling with coals and smoke wood on one side and nothing on the other
• Target temperature of the grill is 300-325
• Place the picnic roast on the side with no heat and drizzle the roast with the juice of one half lime
• After 90 minutes, drizzle with the other half of the lime
• Once the internal temperature of the pernil picnic roast reaches between 180-200 degrees remove from the heat and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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BBQ Grilling

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This article was initially published on: February 19, 2013