packplantpath
Smoking Fanatic
- Dec 14, 2007
- 478
- 10
Being from and still living at the border of eastern and mid NC, I'm quite partial to the eastern Q. But, I don't turn down the Lexington stuff either.
On this topic, it's funny. Nowhere on this forum do I see people cook whole hog the way my family has always done it. We use the old barrels, but no fire box. Just pre-burn wood and shovel it in. About 12 hours later, you've got a done pig. Only turn once, and that's after it's 2/3 done. At that point we turn it skin side down and run the heat to it a bit more, say 280* to crisp that skin up. Get out the old meat cleaver and chop and pull. We never used a guage in the cooker to know cooking temps, I guess because a whole hog is quite forgiving what with all the grease there.
Anyway, I always found it interesting that it is a direct heat we use instead of indirect, we just place the pig high enough away from the rack that we don't sear anything and it's still low and slow. I'm still looking for the cash to get my own whole pig cooker.
On this topic, it's funny. Nowhere on this forum do I see people cook whole hog the way my family has always done it. We use the old barrels, but no fire box. Just pre-burn wood and shovel it in. About 12 hours later, you've got a done pig. Only turn once, and that's after it's 2/3 done. At that point we turn it skin side down and run the heat to it a bit more, say 280* to crisp that skin up. Get out the old meat cleaver and chop and pull. We never used a guage in the cooker to know cooking temps, I guess because a whole hog is quite forgiving what with all the grease there.
Anyway, I always found it interesting that it is a direct heat we use instead of indirect, we just place the pig high enough away from the rack that we don't sear anything and it's still low and slow. I'm still looking for the cash to get my own whole pig cooker.