Hawaiian Kalua Pork
What is kalua pig?
Kalua literally means "cooked in an underground oven," which makes sense because this traditional Hawaiian cooking method uses an underground oven called an imu.
To make the oven, a large dirt pit is dug. Then, a fire is built in the pit using kiawe wood (similar to mesquite).
Large rocks are placed in the pit to help retain the heat once the fire dies out. When the rocks are hot, the pit is lined with ti or banana leaves.
A whole hog is salted, wrapped in more ti or banana leaves, and placed into the pit.
It is then covered with wet burlap and a layer of sand or dirt to keep in the moisture and heat.
Then, it is left to cook for 6-7 hours, during which time it is infused with smoke from the kiawe wood and flavor from the banana leaves.
The meat comes out of the pit tender, smoky, salty, chin-drippin', finger-lickin' good. All you need is to shred it and dive right in!
How to make kalua pork without a pit
Even if you don't have access to a large pit, it is still possible to enjoy tender and flavorful kalua pork.
Many home-cooked recipes will use an oven or slow cooker to cook the meat low and slow, creating the right texture and tenderness. However, cooking the pork this way means that you don't get that wonderful, smoky flavor.
Many of these recipes will make up for the lack of smoke flavor by adding liquid smoke seasoning.
But, if you have a smoker (or a charcoal grill) you can get that smoky flavor naturally.
And, honestly, kalua pork is meant to be smoked, so why not smoke it if you can?
The right smoke for our kalua pork recipe
Imus are traditionally heated with kiawe wood, which is a Hawaiian mesquite.
It is nearly impossible to get kiawe wood on the mainland, so we used mesquite wood chips to create a similar flavored smoke in our smoker.
While kiawe will impart a more tropical flavor to the meat, using American mesquite wood will get us close to the authentic smoke flavor.
Working with banana leaves
There are very few ingredients that go into making delicious kalua pork.
If you have your mesquite wood chips, you're off to a good start, but there is still something missing.
In order to get a truly authentic flavor, you can't skip the leaves to wrap the meat.
Banana leaves infuse the pork with a flavor unlike anything we have tasted before.
Luckily, you can find banana leaves in the freezer section of your local Latin or Asian grocery store. If you don't have one of those in your area, you can also purchase frozen banana leaves from Amazon. (Just be sure you are getting the frozen ones, and not ones labeled for 'deco' or decor purposes.)
What is served with kalua pork?
Kalua pork is traditionally served with cooked cabbage and rice.
Sweet potatoes would also make a good, and authentic side dish.
Hawaiian Kalua Pork
Tender and juicy slow-cooked pork that will bring you a taste of the Hawaiian islands. Our Hawaiian Kalua Pork recipe is cooked in the smoker, creating tender meat with a natural and authentic flavor.
**When determining how much meat you need to serve your crew, remember that a pork shoulder will shrink during cooking by about ⅓. **
Ingredients
- 2 c mesquite wood chips
- 4 lb pork shoulder, or Boston butt
- 1 ½ teaspoon Hawaiian Pink Sea Salt, or coarse grained sea salt
- Banana leaves
Instructions
- Preheat your smoker to 200F (or set your grill for indirect cooking at 200F). Place the wood chips in a bowl and cover them with water. Let them soak while you prepare the meat.
- Rub the sea salt into the pork and wrap it in banana leaves. Tie the leaves with kitchen twine, so the packet stays together.
- Add a couple handfuls of soaked mesquite chips to the hot coals in your smoker and place a tray of water under your cooking grate.
- Smoke your roast between 200-225F for around 8 hours, adding wood chips and charcoal every hour.*
- The meat is done when it has reached an internal temperature of 190F.
- Remove the meat from the smoker and let it stand for 10 minutes before unwrapping and serving.
- Serve with steamed rice and a cabbage slaw or macaroni salad and Hawaiian sweet rolls.
Notes
*To speed up the process, smoke the roast for 4 hours and transfer it to a 325F oven to continue cooking for an additional 2 hours.
Recommended Products
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, We earn from qualifying purchases.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
8Serving Size:
⅛ of recipeAmount Per Serving: Calories: 691
DISCLOSURE: This post does include Amazon affiliate links. These links are provided to help you find some of the more specialty ingredients we mention in the recipe. If you make a purchase on Amazon after following our affiliate links, we do receive a small commission from Amazon, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting Curious Cuisiniere!
This is one of the recipes from the early days of Curious Cuisiniere. We've updated our pictures since we first shared it, but we've left some originals here, in case you've found us in the past and are looking for that old, familiar image.
Sarah founded Curious in 2010 as a way to save her recipe creations and share culinary experiences. Her love for cultural cuisines was instilled early by her French Canadian Grandmother. Her experience in the kitchen and in recipe development comes from over 10 years working in professional kitchens. She has traveled extensively and enjoys bringing the flavors of her travels back to create easy-to-make recipes.
I am so excited to find your site and will be visiting often. We tried the kalua pork and I am asking for advice since ours was very tender but ended up rather tasteless. We ended up with a 10 pound pork butt (next time will have the butcher cut in half since we discovered a bone in it when we went to half it ourselves). We used 2 TBS (tablespoons) of pink salt and wrapped in banana leaves, smoked with mesquite wood in our smoker for about 10 hours. We using the injection recipe from a previous commenter (next time we will inject the night before) but did not use the pork rub suggested by that commenter on the pork, only in the injection. Would you kindly offer suggestions.
Hi Pat. What kind of flavor are you looking for in your pork? Kalua Pork is really about the tenderness of the meat and the subtle flavors of the banana leaves and the wood smoke that are accented by the salt. But, if you are looking for more pop in flavor with this same method, then by all means use a rub on your pork or a Hawaiian style barbecue sauce. It won't be as traditional, but what is important is that it suits your tastes!
i have two Picnic roasts witht he skin on them. Would you leave the skin on and wrap in the leaves, or remove it? if i was roasting it in the oven, i would crisp up the skin, but wrapping it and smoking seems like it would create a mushy type texture if the skin was left on. any suggestions?
HI Justin. I would still leave the skin on in the wrap. It definitely won't crisp up like in the oven, but it will continuously baste the meat as the fat renders, making your meat very flavorful and juicy. You can always remove what's left of the skin after smoking and crisp it in a pan or in the broiler. Enjoy!
Have you ever tried pork ribs the same way? I have done a 18lb turkey using same style of cooking with banana leaves and algae salt only and it came out super moist.
Hi Tony. We haven't tried ribs this way, but it sounds like something we need to try (along with turkey)! Thanks for sharing!
Awesome recipe! My wife and I pulled this off for her coworkers yesterday, approximately 100 people, and it turned out great! They absolutely loved it 🙂 We did make a couple adjustments, for anyone interested in feeding a large crowd with this recipe, this is how we did it.
1.) Purchased 50# of Pork Shoulders/Boston Butt/ Picnic Roast, we did six 8-10 pound roasts for a hundred people and plenty of leftovers.
2.) Night before- Injected the roast with a simple pork injection marinade (https://www.thespruceeats.com/easy-pork-injection-marinade-335271), salted the roasts, wrapped them in banana leaves and then placed them in large tin-foil half pans and stored them in the fridge overnight.
3.) 6pm- Started smoking them at 225-250 degrees in my horizontal smoker, the ones I couldn't fit in the horizontal I cooked in my vertical gas smoker at the same temp.
4.) @165 degrees we pulled them out of the smokers, wrapped them in tin-foil (banana leaves and all) and finished them in the oven at 325 degrees. The ones that wouldn't fit in the oven went back into the vertical @250 degrees, surprisingly, the ones in the vertical didn't take that much longer to finish.
5.) @205 degrees, approximately 2am, we pulled them out of the oven, placed a large towel in the bottom of an ice chest and placed the roast in layers in the ice chest (No ice obviously).
10am- Pulled the first two roast out of the ice chest, pulled the meat which fell off the bone and was SUPER moist! and started serving, We paired it with a Hawaiin BBQ Sauce (https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/lindas-hawaiian-barbecue-sauce-for-barbecue-chicken-and-ribs-247601) on Hawaiian Hamburger Buns.
1pm- Pulled the remaining roasts out of the ice chest, which were still plenty hot, pulled them, and divided the meat up among the staff 🙂
What a feat! We're so glad you enjoyed our recipe, and thank you so much for sharing your process. We have had multiple readers ask about doing this on a larger scale, so your feedback is very helpful!
Have you tried smoking the whole pork shoulder (8-10lbs) for 4-5 hours at 225 Degrees and then removing and wrapping in the leaves and putting the traditional braising liquid (Pineapple, ginger and maybe some chilis in for heat) then tying up in banana leaves. and finishing the pork off for another 4 hours.. My concern is smoking the whole butt in the leaves the entire times seems like it won't create the iconic crust the shoulder should have. Have you tried a similar technique?
Hi Tyler. We haven't tried the method you mentioned, but it sounds tasty and we'll have to give it a go this summer once we get our smoker out again. Thanks for sharing.
I would like to prepare and cook this in a Treager smoker/bbq.....would you have any tips ..am doing pork butt and a turkey?
Hi Mel. We aren't familiar with working with a Treager smoker, and we haven't cooked this work alongside a turkey either. Our best advice would be to watch your smoker temperature carefully. And, with the extra meat in there, it is quite possible that it will take longer to smoke. Use an thermometer to check the doneness of both of your meats before serving. Definitely stop back by and let us know how it turns out for you. Enjoy!
I’m making this for my wedding reception this coming weekend. My question is can I smoke this the day before and hold it in an electric toaster pan turned done as low as I can go? Or should I just knuckle down and do this over the night before. Approx amount of pork is 30-40 lbs
Hi Ian, You could definitely prepare this ahead of time. I would recommend wrapping your smoked pork butts (with the leaves) in aluminum foil, letting them cool and refrigerating them over night. Then, re-heat them before serving in your toaster pan, still wrapped so they don't dry out. It will probably take a few hours for that much meat to come up to temperature. Enjoy!
It looks amazing! THIS recipe has my mouth watering! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe.
Thank you! Enjoy!
Thanks for sharing this. One correction: Hawaii is obviously a state so you probably mean “mainland” in “It is nearly impossible to get kiawe wood in the States”.
Good call! Thanks for catching that!
How does the smoke get through the banana leaves. Could you smoke it first, (3 hours) and then wrap in the leaves?
Surprisingly enough the smoke does penetrate the banana leaves. You're not looking for a classic "smoke ring" here like you would with other smoked meats. Rather, you're wanting the flavor of the banana leaves and smoke mingled together. If you would smoke the meat first, the flavor of the smoke would overpower the flavor of banana leaves. But, if you'd like, you can always give it a try that way and let us know what you think!
We are having a large luau and I am using a wood smoker. The quantity of meat is 2 each 7.5 lb pork butts. How much time would I adjust the cooking?
Hi Greg. It's always hard to say an exact time because there are so many factors, but we like to estimate 1.5 - 2 hours per pound if you're cooking around 200 - 225F. You really want to go by internal temperature of the meat though. Get a good meat thermometer and check it after 8 hours to see how it's doing. You want your final temperature to be around 195-205F. If it's done early, just wrap it in aluminum foil and stick it in your oven (turned off) to rest. It will stay warm for quite a while. Enjoy!
Some of the best smoked pork I have done using a propane grill as an offset smoker!!
Wonderful! We're so glad you enjoy it!
we made this dish and it was fantastic. we followed your recipe except in the smoker we put a pan of water. what a taste! my son made a sauce of pineapple juice, soy sauce, five spice, ketchup and some other ingredients. Excellent! thank you for this great contribution you made.
So glad you enjoyed the recipe Brian! Your son's sauce sounds delicious!