Bored of the same turkey dinner every Christmas? Shake it up and fire up your BBQ and try one of the best and simplest Spanish Christmas food recipes on the planet. Starring our Whole Suckling Pig, this classic is brought to life by the larger-than-life Marcus Bawdon of “Country Woodsmoke BBQ UK” fame who was delighted to share his recipe with us.
Who is Marcus Bawdon?
Marcus Bawdon lives in Devon and was a vegetarian for 14 years who secretly dreamt about the prefect steak cooked over an outdoor fire to perfection. He is Mr BBQ. He established his excellent website and blog in 2011 which includes some delicious Spanish Christmas food recipes, teaches thousands at his UK BBQ School, has written three books including Food & Fire and is BBQ Consultant of The BBQ Mag. He has thousands of followers and subscribers on YouTube, Instagram and X – plus he has largest UK-based outdoor cooking group on Facebook. So, who better is there to give you Christmas BBQ ideas and cook our Whole Suckling Pig than Marcus?
Why a Christmas BBQ?
Why would you have a BBQ Christmas dinner? It’s a perfectly good question and it’s one we put to Marcus. “I’ve done it for the last 14 year” revealed Marcus, “I just love the flavour and fun”.
Marcus hits the nail on the head. A BBQ Christmas dinner makes so much sense. It’s inarguably different, tremendous fun and it enables you to create incredible smoky flavours you simply can’t achieve in a normal oven.
If Christmas dinners are far too contrived and formal for your liking, a Christmas BBQ is the answer. Alfresco cooking is so effortlessly sociable. It really pulls together friends and family, making it an occasion to really remember.
Forget being couped up inside a stuffy overcrowded house, nodding off and missing all the fun. Grab a cosy blanket, hunker down around the barbecue and help yourselves to a heartwarming glass of mulled wine that’s gently warmed by the flames. Watch your dinner cooking before your eyes and take in the sights, sounds and smells of barbecue cooking.
Then comes the feast itself. Prime sizzling meats take on the wonderful smokey flavours of the wood fire. They then take centre stage, served in a rustic style, ceremoniously carved on a solid wooden chopping board before being generously plated and enjoyed by all your appreciative guests.
Finally, instead of the dreaded washing up, conversation flows and you slip into the evening, and enjoy the dancing flames, glowing embers and wonderful warmth of the fire.
Why a Whole Suckling Pig?
Whole Suckling Pig, along with our Milk-Fed Lamb, is one of our most popular premium roasting meats and it brings real theatre to the Christmas dinner table. It’s no ordinary meat though. Unlike commercially reared animals, our whole suckling pigs are kept with their mothers up to a maximum of 21 days. This farming method stays true to the traditional practices from which the name suckling pig was derived. Keeping things natural also delivers meat with the finest flavour and texture, which makes it the ideal choice for a BBQ Christmas dinner.
Marcus absolutely loves our Whole Suckling Pig. “It’s the perfect size to cook in a couple of hours as a feast with a few mates or around the table at Christmas.”
Cooking asado-style
Marcus is a master in outdoor cooking and he has a wide variety of different ways of cooking in his arsenal. For this BBQ Christmas dinner of roast Whole Suckling Pig, he selected his asado grill. Also known as a “parrilla”, it’s a type of grill from South America which is usually used at highly social outdoor meals called an asado. It’s a really simple type of grill that lets you adjust its height to regulate the cooking temperature of the meat. Ideal for a Christmas BBQ!
Marcus owns a pretty impressive Asado which he swears by. “An asado frame grill gives me plenty of options and a lot of space to cook on – a friend made this beast!”
Marcus’ BBQ Christmas dinner recipe
Marcus is a regular Basco customer and for his asado-style suckling pig, he ordered a Whole Suckling Pig which we delivered to his home in Devon. It’s over to Marcus to explain his recipe and technique…
“I’ve not seen many of these cooked, and they’d be traditionally cooked in a wood fired oven. I wanted a simple asado fire style of cook over cherry wood embers, to crisp up the skin and add a wonderful sweet smokiness to the juicy tender pork.”
Marcus placed the suckling pig on the grill and left it to slowly sear for around two hours, turning carefully just a couple of times. “It’s important not to move the meat around once it’s on the grill” he explained.
“Cooked perfectly over cherry wood embers, with the sweet smoke on the crispy skin, this was a little bit of heaven.”
You can serve suckling pig for a BBQ Christmas dinner with whatever you wish, but Marcus had his own interesting Spanish Christmas food recipes for sides. “Enjoyed with family and good friends, I also cooked sides of charred paprika butter and toasted almond hispi cabbage, garlic chorizo beans and a few padron peppers.”
Alternative Spanish Christmas food recipes
If suckling pig isn’t to your tastes, consider the many other equally delicious traditional Spanish premium meats that can be stars for a Christmas BBQ. Here are a few excellent alternative suggestions available from Basco.
Milk Fed Lamb is hugely popular for a Christmas BBQ. Utterly authentic and available from Basco as whole, half, quarter and legs, in Spain, it is known as Lechazo or ‘Cordero Lechal’. It is incredibly soft with crispy golden skin with a deliciously creamy melt-in-the-mouth texture when barbecued. Big on beef? Prime Galician Beef is a personal favourite of Marcus’ and, like Wagyu Beef, is always a winner. The rib steaks have beautiful natural grass-fed marbling from 8 to 10 years of rearing and are perfect for a BBQ Christmas dinner. Prefer pork? Spain spoils you again with Christmas BBQ ideas like Iberico Secreto, Coppa and Presa steaks from indigenous black Iberico pigs that wander the dehesa forests of southwest Spain feasting on herbs, grasses and acorns.
You can also browse Basco-founder and Basque chef Javier’s 40 Christmas Recipes here.
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