Nochebuena in Miami: Lechón, Dominoes & Cuban Christmas Traditions

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Happy Noche Buena. It's a beautiful, beautiful Christmas Eve day. We are here. I'm not super festive. Pooch is definitely more festive than me. The golfing Santa. That is a good little sweater. Glow. That is low golfing. Very solid. Where'd you get that? I got it. So Amazon. What happened was I had an ugly sweater party and I'd ordered this one. But it I guess on Amazon it was like delayed. So I was like shit. So I ordered another one that came on time and then this one came in to so the other one is him taking a swing. This is him just like kind of like oh she got two golf. The one I wore for days party is different than this one. It's a different pose of Santa. It's the same company but the different standard golfing. This is more like a cat. I actually like that one. This is like a casual like sitting by the tee. It's got the palm trees and everything on it. Dude, it's it's awesome. It's I have two of these. So now I have two for the occasion. So I have one of him swinging. It's all about the vibe of a more of a chill vibe or an active vibe. I can wear Santa swinging or Santa vibing something. It's vibing. Santa's vibing on Christmas Eve. I love it. It's playing some golf. Well, welcome back. It was got a good episode for you today. Obviously with Christmas Eve and Noche won out. We want to touch a little bit on some of the Noche when a tradition. Traditions man. Right. I mean, this is a big holiday for us. Guano's here in Miami. We go all out. Basically don't do anything on the 25th. So talk to me a little bit about what Noche won. I mean, see you and and and the history of your Noche when I'm at Noche. When I was the day that the whole family gets together. La familia, la primo, the primo hermano, everyone gets together, you know, at night, obviously you don't do this during the day. It's not a daytime excursion to say nighttime. Noche one has a nighttime. I don't know about that. Maybe like late afternoon going into night. Maybe but I've always been we've always started our Noche when I was late at night like 730. But you got to cook the pig. You won't. I'm talking about when everyone actually got around. Okay. Yeah. The actual day of Noche when I was a full day kind of thing, obviously the prep and everything, but the actual party, the festivities and starts at night. Right. You have, you know, you got your pig already done. Maybe it's on this last round, then you got to take it out. You have one side of the family carving of the pig. You have the little little little idea everyone drinking and I said this, you know, you have the kids, you know, running around the field or the grass, whatever they're doing. The field. The field. They're in the middle of tropical park. My grandma's a big guy. My grandma's a big guy has a big yard. He's got fields at his house. This is where my guy was a big yard. So they're out there in the backyard running around. And then no, man, just, you know, it's always good just, you know, it's like I said, man, just being with a family, when the family at all, the way, you know, everyone just kind of comes together and, you know, just kind of celebrates the holidays together. You know, it's the true out say out of all the Cuban specific holidays because obviously Noche one has a very big Cuban holiday. I wouldn't say it's the same. I'm sure they celebrate about the as the same effect across other cultures. Nochawena is more of a it's called Nochawena for a reason. It's more of a Latino holiday. Latino by I think for sure more Cuban than anything. I think they go out the most. Yeah. Like if you go anywhere else in the country, they're not set up going hard on Nochawena. They go hard for Christmas Day. Right. But Nochawena is a day that we go hard. And you know, for the most part, there's even presents being exchanged on Nochawena. People open their presents on Nochawena. Christmas Day just like the recoup day. I absolutely I do absolutely nothing on Christmas Day. Yeah. I mean, maybe see some family but I mean, that's it. Christmas Day is now it's it's NFL Day. Exactly. NFL Day but Christmas Day is a breakfast. You open some gifts. Right. It's a normal day. Exactly. You bring it by noon. It's over. Yeah. Maybe you're bringing maybe your grandparents come over and make a little breakfast for everyone. You open your presents, a little gift exchange. But I say it's not like something that goes on, you know, throughout the day, we're not doing a big dinner. That's why Nochawena happens. Yes, absolutely. But I mean, I love Nochawena. You know, I think it's always, you know, fun holiday, you know, everyone gets dressed up. We'll see if maybe the temperature comes down a little bit more. Things to be a little warm. I have the weather report. What is it? 83 degrees high and then maybe break 70 at night. Maybe. So it's a warm Nochawena once again. We're not it's tough to get a cool Nochawena. I think I think it's more likely for us to get a cooler new year. But for the most part, Nochawena is always warm, but it's okay. We're built for it. You know, so rock out the shorts leaves, you know, don't wear a sweater. You know, what bro, if it was allowed, you know, but I think people like to dress up for Nochawena. People, you know, people would try to I'm cooking the pig all day. So I am in T-shirt shorts and I like to rock a flannel for Nochawena. I like I think a flannel is a good vibe for Nochawena. You know, it's kind of, you know, festive, you know, you get your red, kind of red and blue flannel. Do your thing. It's tough, though, because like for me, I'm legit sweating. I got you the whole day. I got so dressing up on Nochawena becomes like not a thing for me. I would say that's the one thing I miss from our kind of our festivities is that we haven't committed to doing the pig as much anymore. That's one thing that we've missed out on and like, for the most part, we have a small family. So a whole pig never really made sense for us. But we still have pig. Yeah, we do like one happy at night. Yeah, because realistically, like we're, like I said, I have my grandparents, my sister, my parents, and that's pretty much it in terms of media family, right? I don't got a whole bunch of primos. I don't got a whole bunch of, you know, you know, we don't have a huge family. So a 30 pound pig, it was like, you know, I must tell, but we did go to the Vietnam. A bit of will take apart. I will obviously bring more food and stuff. Everyone brings their thing. But I do wish that we had that lechon making kind of deal, which we did back in the day. Yeah, we did. We did. And you know, it's just something that our family got a little bit smaller. So, you know, a huge pig didn't really make a whole bunch of sense. Make sense. But that is I mean, that's, and that's where I'm going to switch it to you, man, because that is your squeeze. That is your specialty. You look forward to this year. You perfect the recipe throughout the year. Every year it evolved. So talk to me, you know, what do you think about the pig this year? What is Andre's notion when a pig going to look like this year? It's I'm gonna the skin has been mastered. The skin's teach at own is is where is where I I thrive. And you know, I think the the saison and the seasoning, the moho, all that. Pretty traditional. Well, I wouldn't say super traditional. As far as like the seasoning, you know, that goes into the pig. Obviously, moho is involved as like the base. Use a lot of herbs. So some parsley in there, some oregano, just to give it a little bit of a cake, you know, give it a little bit of something. And then, you know, a little bit of citrus, things like that, just just to get the skin nice and juicy, get it ready and primes. And of course, salt the crap out of it. Going in going into the skin, you got the skin and then comes the cooking. I mean, we don't we so I grew up using a traditional caja China, right? Charcoal on the top, but the pig in the in the box and let it cook for for hours, right? Now we don't use that we use what they call the caja asadora, which is like this big metal box, which you're starting to see a lot more of them now. And essentially, you cook the pig from the charcoal on the bottom and then the pigs actually at the top. So it's different than the traditional caja China. But we've been using it now for the last couple years. And I like it because I feel like I have more control of the pig, right? The pig just kind of sits in the box. And it does its thing, which is fine. Here, I can really, really control every single angle of cooking the pig to like the fullest, right? And that to me is why I like it so much. And then the skin is like there, you cook way better skin than in my opinion, than in the traditional God, you know, not a knock on caja China at all. It's just I feel like I can do what I want to do with the pig, right? So for me, it's it's pretty much standard operation, especially now that we have a win under about and caja China, you know, pigroging pigrocing on this. So it's like, why change it? It's not broke, don't fix it. Right? Broke don't fix it. I agree. So I'm gonna kind of continue with the path that we've we've used in the past, get that temperature up to about like internal temperature of the meat up to like 190 195 and that's controversial. I've there's guys saying, Oh, no, you're cooking it. I'm like, dude, this is how we cook it. This is how we want. I'm going to continue to do it that way. And broke. Don't fix it. Exactly. So get that internal meat time to like 190 195 before you flip it. And then from there, you flip it and then, you know, the skin you can cook it as slow or as quick as possible. Personally, you can get that chicharron, you know, on the top. But the problem is, if you cook the skin too fast, then you get that like fatty layer on the bottom of the skin, right? So to really dry out the skin, you actually got to cook the skin slow on that once you flip it over, right? Even though it's cooking as it's sitting in the box, still want to cook that skin layer a little bit before you really ramp it up. So I think it is what people forget. You don't want to cook it fast. Because you can you could dry out that skin get it super crispy. But then the bottom layer of the skin is still fatty. Right? So you kind of get that rubbery crunchy. I mean, some pigs are thick, you know, some of those boys fast. So if you don't cook if you cook it too fast, like, yeah, you'll cook the outside. But when you get exactly out of Mayo, it's raw. Last thing you want is raw, raw pork. It's like a cardinal. So that's why getting that you want to get that internal meat time to that 190 195 because you're basically guaranteeing that by the time you flip it over that the pig is going to be cooked in its entire not going to get that raw meat, essentially, right? So 190 195 you flip it and then I usually try to cook the skin for like 30 minutes before I really ramp it up to then get that that bubbly. Yeah, and that's that's where everybody I think tries to get to right. But I think that that sweet spot is just going to master to bubble up to that point that you could just literally rip it off. That's what I want to accomplish this year. If there's anything I think we do a good job of like getting good pieces that cheat on on but I want to find the way to master where like, you see how people literally just cut out the whole sheet of the whole back of this. Yeah. So that if there's anything different, we haven't really done that to its folk about we'll get massive peaches of pieces of cheech at home. But I want to get the whole skin, you know, to come off. So that's that's the big thing. This is the one that shown that it's I forgot where I was, but it's memorable because I remember exactly they cut it into fours. Yeah, essentially, they got the skin so right that they just grab the quadric exactly. And just came off that that's usually pretty that's pretty much how we get it to right. I mean, you're talking about pieces of cheech at own like, yeah, like this right. So but I want to get the whole sheet of the back off. I really thought about scoring the pig before you do. Yeah, yeah, I scored in. We store it. So you know, we cut we cut it enough so that it gets it you don't want to score too much because sometimes too much of the heat really lifts the skin up. Yeah, but you want it to come up enough so you can get that separation between the skin and like, yeah, like the thick layer of the skin and the actual cheat chat on part. I got a question for you. Yeah, at this point, so many let's go to be made you won. Would you go to a party where you're not the one making the little one? Yeah, I would go but I gotta know what how they cook that pig. You know, I'm gonna be like, come on, drink. Come on. You're not gonna show me like, no, no, no, you want to know how it's being done. You're gonna be that guy that like tells a guy what to do, you know, because everybody's got their thing. But you know, I'm gonna be peeking to see like, like you want to be there for the process. I like doing it. Yeah, you know, like I enjoy it. I like the component of what goes into cooking a pig because it's just like, you know, it's a six hour ordeal, four to six hours, you know, whatever that timeframe is. But you're hanging out, you're playing dominoes, like you're drinking beer, you're having you're having a good time, you know. And to me, I like that because it's it's a full day of festivities while you're cooking that that aspect is why I think I like it the most. And then obviously, like the end product is always like, damn, I just cook this all day, you know, that that part's cool. So you want to be involved in the process? Yeah, some some capacity, you just want to be like, yeah. If there's anything like that I would like to be involved if I wasn't actually being the guy is the skin skin. Yeah, you want to be the first skin you're sure. Because bro, you know, the seasoning, having the pig out, you know, the night before so I get different like it's a whole process, right? Like, there's a lot of preparation that goes into it. And it's I want to say it's stressful, but like, take some time. Yeah. Right. And like that part, you know, maybe I let somebody else do that. And then I when it comes to like actually cooking the pig the day of then then I'll be there. But the preparation part is the part that when you look at ocean winter, do you think that the party hits different? If the lechon isn't good? Oh, for sure. If the lechon is not good, people are gonna be disappointed. Yeah. Like is it like a cardinal sin to mess up the lechon for not your way now? I would say so. I would say so. It's tough, bro. Because I mean, like, I feel like you have to like, practice doing it like the like you can't just like rip try doing it on like, on not your way now. Like, look at the like for the cajina, for example, right? It's got the directions right on the side of the box. So it tells you at this hour, you're putting this amount of charcoal. You I mean, it's kind of hard to mess up at the end, like just to cook it, right? Perfecting it is maybe a different situation. But maybe it doesn't season properly. Like that's where like the art comes in. But I'm sure you can cook it right. You can burn the skin. You could you could you maybe cook the meat too much, right? But at the end of the day, the cajina was built so that anybody essentially use a friendly user friendly lechon tells you exactly how long to cook everything how much charcoal to put if you could just follow directions, you should be able to cook the pig, you know, to to a standard. But the thing is now how do you take it to the point where it's like, damn, this freaking good pig. Listen, man, pigs, family dominoes and beers. I mean, it's like, it's like the Cuban commandments. I mean, like, what else do you need? What else do you need? No, Joanna, but what is, you know, so many not your winters? What's your favorite memory from your notes? I have one favorite memory from no, Joanna, damn. I don't know. I mean, obviously, growing up, you know, we always hosted no, Joanna, you know, at my house, you know, I miss like having like my grandfather around for no Joanna and all that. But I don't know, I don't know, I don't have a favorite memory. I do like, you know what, I would say the first pig that I ever cooked, like on my own, which is probably my favorite memory. I basically, you know, a bunch of family stuff went on. The tradition was not going to continue anymore. My grandfather was not around. Basically, no one was going to put it upon themselves. And I remember going to Sedanos and buying my own cajina and saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this, like, whatever. I'm cajino, I think was like $250 at the time. Yeah, I went there, bought it, put it in the truck and I'm like, all right, we're gonna do it this year. Yeah, and that and that and then since then, that was 12 years ago. Yeah, basically. And did you go and pick out your pig? You got a pig already frozen? Yeah, I don't know, frozen pig back in the day, back, back, back in the day when we used to do the pig, we used to go to a think guy and like, listen, man, I think that which it's crazy. But I think that's like a Cuban milestone is going to the slaughterhouse and picking your pig and being like, I want Charlotte's web right there. That's the one I want. Christ. Oh my God, poor piggy. Listen, bro, I got I got I got a good one. And it's from when I was little. And the only reason I remember is because people have told me stories is I was like probably like three or four years old, young, young, young. And this is when you had a pretty pretty big not sure when I and obviously like, you know, I was like, I guess I was the only little kid there. There wasn't like a ton of little kids. I think it was me. My little sister was still like in a carriage. So she was even old enough. And excuse me, stroller, not a carriage. She's in her stroller. She's maybe like one years old. And my dad obviously wanted to surprise me. So he drove some he dressed up a Santa Claus. He was like, Oh, Santa Claus came dropped off your presence. And I don't run from stories from my he has my Oelos. I got so freaked out that I passed out. I'm seeing Santa. Wow. But did you know is your dad? No. Oh, I was a baby. He had disappeared. And then he saw Santa Claus. And basically he like, we have like the little patio and he just kind of walked in front of the front door and like ringing the bell. Yeah. And like, my ideas like, Oh, look, Danny, Santa Claus. I was like, Oh, I passed out. I passed out. Wow. And my dad, like he says, like, I was there, Dan, I'm like, I'll try to surprise you. Like, I was looking over and I was like, my son just passed out. I passed out, bro. I remember when I passed out at Noche, when I was young, like that, and they would always bring like the Santa to Noche. I wanna, there was a point, you know, when you obviously start growing up and you're like, starting a question like, is Santa Rio and so I remember looking around like the Christmas party, I'm like, what dude is missing right now? I remember looking around the party and being like, you know, one of you guys turned into Santa at one point, there's always someone who just disappeared and I'm like, who is it? Yeah. And they would change it up. So it's like one year, it would be like, okay, well, my dad's there. Okay, my grandfather's there. And who who's the guy that's missing? Yeah. And then eventually I started putting two and two together. Dude, I'll tell you what, man, like, discretion for, you know, don't let your little kids listen to this. But I remember like, you know, like, appreciating the lengths your parents went to to like, I'll let that dude, I remember being in my, my garage, all the families there, dude, someone was on my roof pretending to be the rangers landing. Wow. And I was like, and I did like, I God knows what looked like from the outside, but there's people galloping on my roof to make a scene. That's impressive. Like some guy like, you know, people will come in, we're out of the house and I leave little footprints and shit. Well, we used to, you really appreciate that. Like, honestly, it's like the innocence of like, of the innocence of that whole day. Like, bro, so beautiful being a little king, like Santa came leaving the cookies out. And then like, you know, when you get a little bit older, you try to leave in cameras out. Now, now my hair, I can't. It's probably super hard to do it now to try to keep that little dream alive of Santa Claus. My, my mom used to do, which now, which now I know what it was, but she would put together these little like ziplocks, which had reindeer food in it. So we would go in the front yard and throw reindeer food in the grass. It was oatmeal with sparkles in it. Or glitter. It was oatmeal with glitter in it. And it said reindeer food on it. And we were literally, me and my brother would just be like this throwing oatmeal in the front yard. Just yeah. And then basically, that was like us attracting the reindeer's to come is like, we got to feed him. Listen to my grandma, when she recipes, she was super religious. And she was big, really big on the re malo. Oh, wow. Like for the all the Latinos on there, maybe you don't, you know, but the re malo. Yeah. Did my grandma, I don't know how she did it. But she's like, Hey, the remal are coming today. So the camels are going to come on camels. And like, it might smell bad because the camels are gonna like come through. What would she do? Do there is like don't tell me there was there was legit legit shit. No, the magazine that the camels came through. No. Okay, that's that's quite I mean, Jesus Christ. What? Dude, honestly, they lived in a cat neighborhood. So I can imagine maybe some cat shit and it smelled bad enough. So I made a scene. But bro, it's not the awful. And I was like, a little kid like accumulated in like a certain area. I don't know bro. I remember seeing the ship, but it smelled awful. And she was like, camels came through. So I don't know if she like put some food off for the cat. So big talk about going on. She put laxative in the cat's food because she was like, she was like, they had a ton of cats around there. So I don't know if she like laxated put laxative in the food. So it made it smell really bad. But dude, like, it was bad. And the remal came on their camels. That's next level commitment. There's the commitment levels are insane, bro. But it's a beauty of it. The innocence of you know, being a little kid during Christmas and it was always the best time. Christmas is always 100 the best time of the year, you know, leaving the cookies out and stuff. Yeah, sometimes you wake up and the cookies weren't eating. You're like, Oh, man, dude, that always piss me off. When I would wake up, I'll be like, dude, Santa didn't eat anything. Like it took one bite out of the cookie and the full milk and they're like, my parents are always like, dude, imagine he's been to so many houses is probably so full right now. Like, I don't care. Eat my cookies. Honestly, but like honestly, even to that now, we're like still Christmas still holds like the same way, you know, just like buying gifts and stuff. And like, even that matter, reality is my Christmas it really is about family. The gifts are always just an extra but it's about being with your family, you know, having some laughter, you know, kind of wrap up the year and you know, kind of reminisce all the good stuff. You know, was the year and then you know, Christmas is always just a good time, you know, everyone's in a good mood. It's hard to be in a bad mood on Christmas. It is hard to be especially when you when you get your underwear and socks for Christmas. I'm super hyped. I'm super hyped. You know, come on by socks and all this travel and stuff, all this walking we've done. My socks have taken a hit. So you know, I can use I can use some I can use some socks for I can use I had a Christian happen to me the other day. Yeah, just my big toe coming out of the out of the sock. They go into the gym doing all this brother socks take a beating bro. Socks take a beating and you know, I don't buy an auto model invests in these super expensive socks. I get like these little cheap ones. And I wrote this said romping rabiesi there by and like 20 now after like a couple months of having them. Yeah, you can start seeing a couple of them rip. But not bad. Christmas is Christmas is fun, bro. It is. We're excited. We hope you guys enjoy your Christmas. As always, thank you for for tuning in. Drink a lot of coffee, see the little other croquettes on your No, Chewena. Spray can up to Coquito this time maybe a little Coquito Coquito Coquito Coquito in the back over there. A little Coquito this time of year always hits different. Does it's dangerous to Coquito's too good, bro. That's a whole nother episode. That is that's all. Why is Coquito good and it destroys you at the same time? Yeah, it's a sweetness and I know I know how dangerous I'll kill you dude. I see I've seen some strong soldiers go down. Bro, you just drink it like you're drinking like a glass of milk and the next thing you know, you're like five coquitos deep in your then you're done. It's over with it's over. Send us your Coquito vid send us your sentence videos. Send us in you know, if you're your favorite holiday traditions. But yeah, man, you know, Merry Christmas Felina vida de la familia Nosotra o te que lo pasen bien que lo pasen felices. Hope you get nice presents. Hope you get nice socks and underwears maybe a gift card to Amazon Starbucks. It's a perfect day. Eat some lechon. Eat some good lechon. Eat some lechon. God knows I'm gonna eat some good lechon. Eat some lechon. Eat some cookies, you know, for those of you older people that have to you know, dress up a Santa Claus for the kiddos. Good luck. I had to do the same thing. I had to go down to the travels attributations of being Santa Claus. I'm excited. I'm actually excited for that. I want to be the Grinch though. Oh, dude, that's it's funny. Those videos are crazy. That shit's so funny. Dude, dress them as a Grinch and see how scary these little kids videos are iconic. Dude, it's I feel like the younger parents now have so much more fun because they help on the shelf and I do they'll destroy their kids like those are their kids are balling crying scared for their life. I mean, the videos of them running out with a Christmas tree. I mean, that's that's insane. You can tell I don't know if I'd go that far. Younger parents man, they give me this kids really they love pranking their kids especially now. Yeah, they get the kids like I don't want enough of the stuff. You're gonna get one and you're gonna deal with it. And like don't mess up their I used to mess with my brother with the elf on the shelf thing dude. I would I would go crazy with that. Like a point that I would spook him. He's like, yeah, the house is health pulling. But now like our parents go crazy with like there they look forward to messing with their kids with the shelf and be like, hey, he's gonna mess up. You better just behave. He's gonna mess up. Yeah, it's crazy, bro. But yeah, like it's just great time of the year. It is. I appreciate you guys for tuning in. Hope you guys enjoy it. Enjoy your night. I wanna and we will see you on the next one.