A whole roast suckling pig is quite special. No other feast food of the holiday season cooks so easily, and presents so majestically. With its mahogany, crisp skin and its sticky-tender meat, people thrill to be at the party where this is on the buffet.
Make sure to apply your dry rub to any exposed meat. I also rub on a thin coat of regular yellow mustard before applying the dry rub. It helps it to stick to the meat really well and give the meat a great flavor. You want to spray the outer skin of your whole pig with cooking spray or rub it down with a vegetable oil.
Arrange the pig in the roasting pan, spine up, rear legs tucked under, with feet pointing toward its ears and its two front legs out ahead in front. Sometimes the pig needs a sharp, sturdy, confident chiropractic crack on its arching spine, just to settle it in comfortably to the roasting pan, so it won’t list to one side or topple over.
I would avoid putting anything sweet on the outside of the whole pig until an hour before it is finished. If you use a glaze with a high sugar content any longer than an hour, it will burn. I make an injection that is sweet and put as much of this sweetness inside the meat as possible.