It's been years since I've done a whole hog, probably a decade or more. Because, let's be honest, butts are just easier and you don't have to invite the entire family over to eat it all. But there's something about whole hog barbecue cooked all night over wood that is a thing of beauty that no single cut of meat can compare to. So I asked my father-in-law how he felt about putting up a pit in their backyard and doing a pig for Christmas. And being a lover of all things smoked and meaty, he was fully on board.
I'm a bit of a planner/researcher, so I spent months deciding exactly how I wanted to do this and started sourcing materials. Thankfully, a good friend of mine had some cinder block pit plans that his family had been using for years. I took his plans and made a tweak here and there and started getting my supplies together in early December.
Burn Barrel.
My first hunt was for a good burn barrel to burn the oak down to coals to shovel in the pit. Living in the south, these are usually a dime a dozen. I found a guy selling burn barrels on Craigslist or some seller app for like 20 bucks. Standard metal 50-whatever gallon barrel that previously held antifreeze or some crap I needed to be sure and burn off. When I picked up the barrel, he had only cut the lid off. I then cut a door out in the bottom and ran rebar to make a big grate to hold the wood up top as it burned down. Then I did a high heat burn with a fire in the top and bottom to burn off any residual crap in the barrel. We named him Bill. Fire Marshal Bill.
Wood.
Next, I needed to find the wood I wanted. I knew that I wanted to do the entire cook with all wood (as opposed to a wood/charcoal mix). And I also wanted all oak. Hickory would have been fine, sure. And the majority of the time, when I'm using chunks on a smaller scale, I prefer pecan. But I've always favored oak for whole hog cooks. Dunno why, maybe it's just growing up, all the pits around me seemed to use oak for the most part and that's what I grew up smelling and eating around the holidays. I also wanted to have at least a half cord of oak, but I forgot around these parts most people sell wood by the "truck load." I found a guy selling split, seasoned oak for $80/truck load. He loaded up the bed of my truck and I took it and stacked it at my inlaws a week or two before Christmas and covered it to keep it dry. Just eyeballing it, it looked to be at least a half cord, if not slightly more.
Pit.
The pit is roughly 4 feet by 6 feet. We started with a base of sand to get a roughly level base for the first course of blocks. No mortar was used at all. We wanted the ability to easily disassemble the pit if need be. But we also put it in the back corner of their big back yard where the boss (aka, mother-in-law) couldn't see it from the house, so for the time being, we're keeping it up. We used 2x10 lumber to build a collar which also gave us the ability to screw down the plywood lid and hopefully hold in as much heat as possible. Sorry I don't have great pics of it, but I ran two pieces of half inch rebar across the blocks to support the pig on the stretcher. For the stretcher, I made a sort of three-rung wide ladder with rebar and covered it with 16 gauge expanded steel cut to size. I made two of these, so when it was time to flip the pig, we could "sandwich" the pig between the two stretchers and flip it.
On Christmas Eve, we fired up the burn barrel around 1pm or so. And it took a few hours to get going and start making coals. While that was burning down, we got the pig ready. I don't do any injections on my pigs. And no rub other than a healthy dose of kosher salt. This pig was 101 pounds, no head and no feet. You can see a bit of the stretcher here as well.
Pig went on at about 6pm Christmas Eve with the pit holding steady at 225 degrees. Skin side up, open meat to the heat. I didn't get pics of this either, but we used a plywood lid (not OSB) and I drilled holes and dropped two thermometers in, one at the shoulders and one at the hams to monitor both ends. We kept coals shoveled to both ends of the pit, keeping the heat under the shoulders and hams. We kept the burn barrel rolling all night, adding coals to the pit about every house to maintain 225. I wasn't too OCD about holding right at 225, as long as it held in the 200-250 range, I was happy. But I was also pretty surprised at how well this thing held pretty steady around 225.
At around 3am (9 hours cook time), we flipped the pig. I don't use any internal thermometers on whole hog cooks. I look for the skin to start to separate from the meat around the shoulders and hams to tell me when it's time to flip. After flipping, I start mopping with my vinegar-pepper sauce. I try and mop once per hour after the flip until it's done.
At this point I just keep mopping every hour until it's done. It's done when I can grab one of those shoulder or ham bones and spin it around and it wants to slide right out. At this point we start pulling bones and shredding the meat. We keep mopping the pulled meat at this point and I also add more coals under all parts of the pig to cook the sauce through.
After we had all the meat pulled and everything sauced to my liking, we loaded it all up in my big bread board/dough bowl (I've heard these things called many different names in the south).
We scraped the carcass dry with nary a piece of meat left...
Cleaning out the pit the next day, I found a scavenger trying to find a snack in the pit...
I think he found some snacks, because Dutch was a happy dog after his trip in the pit...
I was a little anxious going into this since it had been so long since I'd done a whole hog. But everything turn out perfectly. I probably could have managed the burn barrel a little better, but we didn't run out of wood and the temps held where I wanted them, so I can't complain too much. And thankfully I had help from my two brothers-in-law to turn shifts so nobody had to stay up the entire night alone. And of course we drank plenty of beer sitting around the pit. I was exhausted the next day, but the barbecue was totally worth it. I can still smell the oak wood burning...
I'm a bit of a planner/researcher, so I spent months deciding exactly how I wanted to do this and started sourcing materials. Thankfully, a good friend of mine had some cinder block pit plans that his family had been using for years. I took his plans and made a tweak here and there and started getting my supplies together in early December.
Burn Barrel.
My first hunt was for a good burn barrel to burn the oak down to coals to shovel in the pit. Living in the south, these are usually a dime a dozen. I found a guy selling burn barrels on Craigslist or some seller app for like 20 bucks. Standard metal 50-whatever gallon barrel that previously held antifreeze or some crap I needed to be sure and burn off. When I picked up the barrel, he had only cut the lid off. I then cut a door out in the bottom and ran rebar to make a big grate to hold the wood up top as it burned down. Then I did a high heat burn with a fire in the top and bottom to burn off any residual crap in the barrel. We named him Bill. Fire Marshal Bill.
Wood.
Next, I needed to find the wood I wanted. I knew that I wanted to do the entire cook with all wood (as opposed to a wood/charcoal mix). And I also wanted all oak. Hickory would have been fine, sure. And the majority of the time, when I'm using chunks on a smaller scale, I prefer pecan. But I've always favored oak for whole hog cooks. Dunno why, maybe it's just growing up, all the pits around me seemed to use oak for the most part and that's what I grew up smelling and eating around the holidays. I also wanted to have at least a half cord of oak, but I forgot around these parts most people sell wood by the "truck load." I found a guy selling split, seasoned oak for $80/truck load. He loaded up the bed of my truck and I took it and stacked it at my inlaws a week or two before Christmas and covered it to keep it dry. Just eyeballing it, it looked to be at least a half cord, if not slightly more.
Pit.
The pit is roughly 4 feet by 6 feet. We started with a base of sand to get a roughly level base for the first course of blocks. No mortar was used at all. We wanted the ability to easily disassemble the pit if need be. But we also put it in the back corner of their big back yard where the boss (aka, mother-in-law) couldn't see it from the house, so for the time being, we're keeping it up. We used 2x10 lumber to build a collar which also gave us the ability to screw down the plywood lid and hopefully hold in as much heat as possible. Sorry I don't have great pics of it, but I ran two pieces of half inch rebar across the blocks to support the pig on the stretcher. For the stretcher, I made a sort of three-rung wide ladder with rebar and covered it with 16 gauge expanded steel cut to size. I made two of these, so when it was time to flip the pig, we could "sandwich" the pig between the two stretchers and flip it.
On Christmas Eve, we fired up the burn barrel around 1pm or so. And it took a few hours to get going and start making coals. While that was burning down, we got the pig ready. I don't do any injections on my pigs. And no rub other than a healthy dose of kosher salt. This pig was 101 pounds, no head and no feet. You can see a bit of the stretcher here as well.
Pig went on at about 6pm Christmas Eve with the pit holding steady at 225 degrees. Skin side up, open meat to the heat. I didn't get pics of this either, but we used a plywood lid (not OSB) and I drilled holes and dropped two thermometers in, one at the shoulders and one at the hams to monitor both ends. We kept coals shoveled to both ends of the pit, keeping the heat under the shoulders and hams. We kept the burn barrel rolling all night, adding coals to the pit about every house to maintain 225. I wasn't too OCD about holding right at 225, as long as it held in the 200-250 range, I was happy. But I was also pretty surprised at how well this thing held pretty steady around 225.
At around 3am (9 hours cook time), we flipped the pig. I don't use any internal thermometers on whole hog cooks. I look for the skin to start to separate from the meat around the shoulders and hams to tell me when it's time to flip. After flipping, I start mopping with my vinegar-pepper sauce. I try and mop once per hour after the flip until it's done.
At this point I just keep mopping every hour until it's done. It's done when I can grab one of those shoulder or ham bones and spin it around and it wants to slide right out. At this point we start pulling bones and shredding the meat. We keep mopping the pulled meat at this point and I also add more coals under all parts of the pig to cook the sauce through.
After we had all the meat pulled and everything sauced to my liking, we loaded it all up in my big bread board/dough bowl (I've heard these things called many different names in the south).
We scraped the carcass dry with nary a piece of meat left...
Cleaning out the pit the next day, I found a scavenger trying to find a snack in the pit...
I think he found some snacks, because Dutch was a happy dog after his trip in the pit...
I was a little anxious going into this since it had been so long since I'd done a whole hog. But everything turn out perfectly. I probably could have managed the burn barrel a little better, but we didn't run out of wood and the temps held where I wanted them, so I can't complain too much. And thankfully I had help from my two brothers-in-law to turn shifts so nobody had to stay up the entire night alone. And of course we drank plenty of beer sitting around the pit. I was exhausted the next day, but the barbecue was totally worth it. I can still smell the oak wood burning...
