I was planning on smoking a whole feral hog I shot this weekend. The guide was pretty insistent on skinning it, so I deferred to his judgment.
Now I can only find instructions on pigs with skin still on. Should I go ahead and smoke it like any other meat? Put bacon on it, maybe a weave? Scrap the plan and just make sausage?
Thanks for any help you can give.
Hi there and welcome!
As mentioned skinning is the way to go unless are really well setup to scald and scrape or to flame and scrape. As also said I dont think u want to fight any fleas, lice, ticks, etc. that hogs carry so skinning solves a lot of that quickly.
I would honestly say to break it down into shanks, front legs, back legs (hams), ribs, backstrap, and tenderloins (inside of rib cage).
You can smoke any of this and with it broken down you can foil wrap some, not wrap others, etc. You can pull various pieces at different times so you dont overcook one part and undercook another part.
Personally I would save the shanks for braised dishes.
I would grind the backstrap and tenderloins BECAUSE you have to cook these feral hogs to 160F internal temp (IT) or a little higher which means you are easily overcooking pork loin and tenderloin so it will never come out as good as farm raised. So may as well grind it.... OR you can cure those cuts and smoke to 160F+ IT and have a canadian bacon type dish. If you grind u can grind all other scraps with these pieces and get a decent amount of super lean ground pork for.
Feel free to smoke the front legs (minus shanks) and then put in foil, douse with a liquid, and wrap to finish.
You can smoke the back legs/hams as well or cure (inject the cure too) and make smoked hams.
You have lots of options but only if you break down the animal. If you try and leave whole don't expect great things out of parts like loins and shanks and ribs which will likely overcook.
I hope this info helps :)