Family reunion is in two weeks. I am in charge of feeding the masses and suggested that we roast a hog. Needless to say, the family was all for it. My neighbor raises hogs and I went for a visit to pick out dinner. It is a full grown sow that should dress out around 150 lbs.
I want to seperate the hog’s ribs from its spine, wire it to a big grill and roast it over a bed of hot coals. The old man wants to use a convential roaster (eg- a big drum on wheels). His concern is primarily weather and he said that he would spring for the rental. As such, I really cannot argue with him. Accordingly, I am looking for some advice and/or tips from those who have experience roasting hogs.
Low, slow, lots of love, beer, seasoning; smoke means flavor. A ‘waller raised’ pig will have more fat than a farm raised big. Fat means flavor as well.
Do you have the option of digging a pit to do it in? Only way I have had it was traditional spit in a pit roasted with the head and everything on. Piglets can be really good as well because they don’t take as much time and you could have 2+ different types of seasoning.
[quote]GhorigTheBeefy wrote:
Do you have the option of digging a pit to do it in? Only way I have had it was traditional spit in a pit roasted with the head and everything on. Piglets can be really good as well because they don’t take as much time and you could have 2+ different types of seasoning.[/quote]
why am I not surprised that someone with the screenname of “GhorigTheBeefy” would have a recipe for roasting a hog
we’ve roasted a pig before and we used the pit method. This was a butchered pig.
They dug the pit, we filled it with charcoal and got them ready then dumped on some applewood, more charcol and they had spiced pinecones that they added to the heap. covered that with a meshing and then some tin foil, then the prepared pig. Covered everything up and it took about 5 hours.
it was sooooo good
We had pineapples on fire, roast apples and onions and amazing fresh fruits and vegetables.
[quote]VanderLaan wrote:
OctoberGirl wrote:
I need me a bbq pit party
Caledonia, Michigan. September 13, 2008. Consider yourself invited. Make the trip - I will spring for beer and let you have some of the cheeks.[/quote]
If I could I would, I bet you are going to have a lot of fun, good food, and friends.
I have a smoker made out of a 250 gallon oil drum. I did some pork butts a couple weekends ago, took about 12 hours to get them to “pulled pork” status.
A whole pig isn’t much different. Keep the heat between 200 and 250, and cook it for about 12-14 hours.
As far as keeping it at the right temp, I woke up at 3 am, got a full bag of charcoal going in the bottom of the cooker. By 4 AM, the fire had burned down enough to put the butts on. To keep it at temp, I just threw a handful of charcoal on about every 10 to 15 minutes.
Don’t over-react if the temp is outside the optimal zone. If it’s not hot enough, just throw a couple handfulls on. If you get crazy with the charcoal, you are going to get it too hot. If it does get too hot, open the lid a bit. I only flipped the pork butts once, but have a rotisserie for the whole pigs.
why am I not surprised that someone with the screenname of “GhorigTheBeefy” would have a recipe for roasting a hog
[/quote]
Why am I not surprised that you love “Teh Pork” wink.
My dad’s side of the family has roots in the Deep South so I know how to do a lot of redneck cooking. Shit give me 5 mins to double check the recipe and I could fry up some squirrel that tastes better than any fried chicken I’ve ever had. Reminds me of the time we were skinning them to try them for the first time…friggin cat came in and swallowed the entire squirrel tail. The tail is almost completely bone and tendons and the cat didn’t even fucking chew it…yeah we saw that tail again in about 2 minutes.
Oh almost fucking forgot…I’ve had beaver and I’m not talking about delicious woman taco! My grandpa had a pine tree farm with a river and 2 swamps running through it. Tons of beavers would come in and tear shit up so we’d just carry .22 rifles around and shoot them.
It was Christmas day and after we shot a baby beaver we some how convinced my dad’s stupid brother to go swim out and get it. So he stripped down to his underoos and swam out in a Mississippi swamp, yeah there are gators big woop you wanna fight about it, and came back looking no better than the shot beaver. My grandpa had to call somebody even more red-neck to figure out how to skin it properly and cook it.
SIDE NOTE: My dad’s brother is so stupid that my dad convinced him to:
Touch the spark plug on the tractor to see if it was producing a spark.
Convinced him that if he held onto a metal hanger that he wouldn’t get shocked by checking the tractor spark plug the next time.
When rolling up newspaper and pretending to smoke it you are supposed to have a big flame and suck really hard.
CONCLUSION: My dad is very mean to his younger brother who is very gullible. My uncle got him back by selling my dad’s coin collection when my dad went off to college.
It was almost all fat and we cooked it in a crock pot all day resulting in some of the nastiest fucking meat you could ever eat. Tasted like fucking mud but at least it melted in your mouth. The best thing was I kept the beaver tail and would chase my sister around the property trying to hit her with it. Being hit by beaver tail really fucking hurts. I’ve got to imagine it would be akin to a black-jack.
OP:
Take lots of pictures since I can’t make it to the roast =(
Oh and sorry for side tracking your thread…next time I’ll just make another thread and link to it. Oh and if you are doing the pit or having open flames make sure the chef(s) don’t drink till the pig is served.
[quote]Uncle Fester wrote:
24 pounds of pork butts![/quote]
Now all we need is a picture of your bloated belly from eating all that pork. Apparently I look like a cute lil lion cub with its belly hanging low after I eat a ton BBQ, Thanksgiving, etc.
[quote]GhorigTheBeefy wrote:
Uncle Fester wrote:
24 pounds of pork butts!
Now all we need is a picture of your bloated belly from eating all that pork. Apparently I look like a cute lil lion cub with its belly hanging low after I eat a ton BBQ, Thanksgiving, etc.[/quote]
Lol, actually, by the time I got all the pork (and the 50 chicken halves) cooked, I couldn’t make myself eat any of it. But I did save a big plate of food for later.
I did a side of Lamb over coals for New Years eve a couple of years back (in the snow).
Do you know any South African’s ? in theory they should know something about cooking largeish animals.
My suggestion is rent a motorised spit and spit roast it whole or in two sides. Your chum with the piggies should be able to get it prepared either way by the slaughterman. You’ll get a whole lot of crackling that way too.
If you want to marinate the meat then the South African way is to buy the biggest syringe you can find and inject the sauce directly into the muscle before or as its cooking.
(Does this reply qualify for the Steriods or SAMA forums now ???)
Oh - and save the brawn for spreading on hot toast.
I am not a total neophyte, as I have roasted whole fresh hams. Just never done anything this stinking big. Got two meat thermometers and a big pile of apple wood. I am leaning towards injecting the hog with clarified butter and then rubbing all over with a dry rub. I have had good success with coating my hams with an olive oil and garlic goo. May go that route. Either way, I am definitely going to stuff the cavity with a few extra racks of ribs and a fresh butt. OG has to be checking her calendar now…
Testy1:
I’m not sure if that is red-neck or not…I’ll say its red-neck due to the fact that it isn’t a logical food source.
OP:
I’d suggest stuffing a few onions in that hog as well. I meant to post this sooner but became side tracked with old family red-neck stories.
Well dang it now I can’t find the name of the dish. The Romans, mainly the army, would roast a bunch of different animals inside progressively bigger animals. So you’d have a game hen inside of a chicken, inside of a duck, inside of a goose, inside of a turkey, inside of a lamb, inside of pig, inside of a cow or ox. They’d then roast it on a spit for a really long time.
We may have to wait and try this during a T-Nation reunion cause I don’t have the money for it.
