La Caja China Cooking: The secret to perfect roasting

UPDATE: if you get heavy duty oven mitts, a metal dustpan you can screw a handle on, and a metal ash bucket you can shovel the ashes off the top and it rapidly increases the temp, and cooks the pig very quickly. have used several times to cook 120lb pigs in under 5 hours!I'm not completely impressed, and I'm not completely disappointed. There are some good ideas in the book, but not a lot of information that should be in such a cook book, and I think the cooking temperatures are off. For whole roasting pig (40-75 lb) it calls for an internal temperature of 190 degrees. Way too high, 160-170 and an hour rest is perfect, and food safe, but the fat renders better at the higher temp/longer cook time.There is no Cuban, Chinese, or Filipino pig recipe (but a great Cuban rub) and I would consider those recipes essential. I'd never do brisket, ribs or fish in it, unless it was a couple of whole king salmon, or a halibut side. I much prefer my smokers, and have taken to smoking turkey for the holidays, but I'm intrigued with the use here, and for lamb. There is a VERY good section for using the top grilling section, sauces, rubs, marinades and sides what I consider the saving grace for this book. ( I roasted cauliflower in the coals first use, Came out great, NOT in the recipe book tho)The sauces and rubs are solid, but any I've used I have or would add my own tweaks to, since I like lots of garlic and mustard in my rubs and sauces. I guess it's a good beginners guide and reference as long as you expand your horizons beyond just this book.

I've owned one of these cooking boxes for close to ten years and always been supremely satisfied with it. This book takes using it to a whole new level. Easy to follow recipes that have me wanting to run right out and fire it up. The various ethnic foods afford many different methods of spicing and cooking foods other than just pig...If you're thinking of buying one of these boxes, by all means get this book first and see all the things you can do with it.

The La Caja China was great the first time I used it, I did a whole pig it came out fine and took just about the suggested time in the manual that came with the roaster. Waiting for the Spring & Summer of 2014 to run it through some more test

I ordered the Kindle edition of this book because I wanted to get it right away before a weekend party. I have not had a chance to try any of the recipes yet, but they look promising, and the author clearly has a love and good knowledge. I can tell that I'm going to have fun with this. My main criticism relates to the Kindle edition of the book, which lacks hyper links. So, you can't jump ahead to a recipe - you can't even jump ahead to a section. The Table of Contents does not work, and the index is omitted. I would rate the book 4 stars but for that issue; if rating solely on the Kindle edition, I would rate it a 2 - hence the 3 stars.

Love the recipesWish it was in color

It's a good recipe book

Husband loved the recipes can’t wait to try it this spring on other thing besides a whole pig.

I believe this book has the best of intentions and that the author really knows what he's doing. His enthusiasm for cooking with the La Caja China roaster is certainly clearly communicated. However the only picture in the book is the one on the cover so I'm left with having to decipher his textual descriptions which are not verbose. I was looking for a resource to help quicken the learning curve on how to cook with the La Caja China roaster but it's clear it won't be useful to me until I've done a bunch of experimenting on my own first.