How to Roast a Whole Pig

[findthefish]

I've always considered myself an exemplary carnivore...many times I've plucked meat from a carcass that is looking back at me, and often tell people that the "cheeks" of any critter are the tastiest part. I've gleefully gobbled down brains, hearts, livers, kidneys, sweetbreads, tripe and other "nasty bits," (in the words of Anthony Bourdain) and come back for more. But tonight I stand humbled.

I wish I was your neighbor.

Anthony Bourdain is the man. That is all.

 

[EvilTOJ]

If I dig down over 2' it fills with water. I'm 3' above sea level 1 mile from the Gulf and the soil is all sand

Simple solution for that is, to just build up instead of down. Dig out a shallow pit, then start heaping up mounds of dirt and line it with bricks. Then add the lid on top.

Call it a porcine burial mound.


And welcome to the boards, VanWilder!

 

[Cape Brewing]

I joined this board just for this thread, my bro in law e-mailed it to me.

I've been wanting to do this for a LONG time & I think this just gave me the how to & incentive....you sir, are a pig pit legend....Thanks.

PS my wife hates message boards now. I keep talking about the pig roast. God bless pigs.

LOL... wow! I'm honored!

I'll admit digging, what is basically a grave, and lining it with brick isn't exactly a ton of fun but once you have it, it's a really nice thing to have. I have sheets of expanded steel that I put over it if I'm doing huge BBQ's (I've done about 20 racks of ribs on it). I also do clam bakes on it.

Making the lid is a piece of cake for anyone that can work a hand saw and a drill. Other than that, honestly, it's really light lifting to do it this way. As I had said in posts past, you put the pig in around noon one day and it's ready around noon the next day. No staying up all night feeding fires, adding charcoal... any of that.

For anyone that's honestly going to try it, the only additional advice I would give is to open the pit the following morning and check the internal temp of the pig with a meat thermometer.... just to make sure you have things down... just in case. I would bet my truck it'll already done the next morning but you want to make sure. Worst case scenario, you can just take the tin foil completely off the intake and chimney and let that pit fire up like crazy for the rest of the day and... oh.. you'll have cooked pig... believe me.

 

[niquejim]

If I dig down over 2' it fills with water. I'm 3' above sea level 1 mile from the Gulf and the soil is all sand

Simple solution for that is, to just build up instead of down. Dig out a shallow pit, then start heaping up mounds of dirt and line it with bricks. Then add the lid on top.

Call it a porcine burial mound.

A nice thought, but I would have to raise 1/2 my yard. The soil is very fine sand that does not mound even a little

 

[Alamo_Beer]

What about cinderblocks jim?

 

[niquejim]

What about cinderblocks jim?

The earth around the pit holds the heat so above ground would not be the same. I think

 

[Cape Brewing]

What about cinderblocks jim?

I'm not sure cinderblocks would work... only because they don't hold the heat. You could probably do it but you would be back into a situation where you would have to add charcoal all the time. Either that or you would have to make the walls two or three cinderblocks thick and then fill them with soil.

What I did with my pit and the bricks is basically just make a big huge oven and since it's in the ground, in hard packed dirt/clay, and then lined with brick, it holds the heat extremely well (which allows the pig to cook for 24+ hours).

Hell... that pit is usually still warm for at least another 24 hours AFTER the pig comes out.

 

[paulthenurse]

Those folks are all South Shore Brew Club folks... I know I said it before but you should swing by for one of our meetings. Half of 'em are at my house.

I know, I know! My problem is that I work night shift, from 7 pm to 7 am. I would miss at least half of the meetings just because of the 'every other' thing, then SWMBO and I try to make up for the nights we don't see each other at all by not arranging to do 'seperate' things on our nights off together.

I almost always go by The Witches Brew on Thursdays between 5:30 and 6:30. Maybe I'll see you there some night. If it's a night off I'll be the large, balding guy, sitting on a stool, getting buzzed, and giving Chris a hard time. If I'm on my way into work, I'll be sitting on the same stool, in scrub pants, drinking rootbeer and giving Chris a hard time. Maybe I'll see yiou there.
PTN

 

[Cape Brewing]

I have a friend that cooks a pig like this every so often. The chimney with the tin foil idea is great. We had to take shifts adding charcoal to the pit so we wouldnt lose a lot of heat. Maybe this way we can just get drunk and not worry about it

Yeah, if you don't put the chimney and air intake, the coals with snuff out and the heat will completely die. You want to get at least a tiny bit of air flow in there to keep the coals burning and providing heat... and then you don't have to stay up. Just cover it up and go enjoy some beers.

 

[fretman124]

I've thought about doing a side of beef... basically half a cow... the problem is I don't think it would be fatty enough and I don't know if the skin would seal it all up like a pig.

GIS "Lords Acre Days" in the little, itty, bitty town of Powell Butte, Oregon. Not sure if they still even have it, but 30 years ago it was a very big deal. They would take entire steers, somewhere around ten of them and do each steer in a pit. Well over a thousand people would show up........

simply awseome food

 

[98EXL]

Very nice, my buddy smokes a pig every year....takes about 10 hours. We leave the head on (I say we because I am his little helper bitch all day) while he smokes. Usually it's between 75-90 pounds. We do a duck inside of a chicken, and put two of those (jammed) into the belly, and stitch it all up.

Best duck, chicken and pig I've ever had. Of course he does some sort of sauce and rub both very light while it's smoking, but it's pretty much virgin

 

[duker]

Man have I been itching to do this.... I have been to a few roasts and they have been great. I do alot of smoking (beef, pork and chickens that is ), but have yet gone "hog wild". I have a double graduation next year (son high school, daughter middle school) so this may be the time, of course I may have to make a couple "Test Runs" first:rockin:

 

[98EXL]

Man have I been itching to do this.... I have been to a few roasts and they have been great. I do alot of smoking (beef, pork and chickens that is ), but have yet gone "hog wild". I have a double graduation next year (son high school, daughter middle school) so this may be the time, of course I may have to make a couple "Test Runs" first:rockin:

start with smoking a duck inside of a chicken...tell me that's not awesome!

 

[mrk305]

I haven't been to a pig roast in years. I wish I was one of your neighbors! Thread prosted! Great pic's!

 

[garyad]

I have the banana leaves in my front yard......woo-hoo

Then reality hits

If I dig down over 2' it fills with water. I'm 3' above sea level 1 mile from the Gulf and the soil is all sand

All is not lost!!!

http://cuban-christmas.com/pigroast.html

 

[DeathBrewer]

this is awesome. we go on a camping trip each year and cook massive amounts of food. we've talked about getting a suckling pig a few times and pit roasting it for a day. i may take some notes from this page and see if we can actually get that done this year! thanks much!

 

[Cape Brewing]

this is awesome. we go on a camping trip each year and cook massive amounts of food. we've talked about getting a suckling pig a few times and pit roasting it for a day. i may take some notes from this page and see if we can actually get that done this year! thanks much!

LOL... just remembered a suckling I did on a camping trip... just to be an obnoxious jerk, we took a suckling on a canoe trip down the Saco up in Maine (for anyone not from NE, the Saco is basically a floating frat party... EVERYONE is drinkin' their faces off, floating down the river and as the day wears on, people pull over, set up camps, camp for the night and then float down the rest of the way in the morning).

I took two heavy duty car batteries, a power inverter, a BBQ spit and hooked them all up, spinning a suckling over a camp fire. People kept floating by our beach-camp with jaws dropped. It was damn good eats too.

I would go with the "pit method" like I described through... shouldn't be too hard with a suckling. Just need a shovel, a bunch of rocks from the camp site and some sort of small lid.

 

[DeathBrewer]

I would go with the "pit method" like I described through... shouldn't be too hard with a suckling. Just need a shovel, a bunch of rocks from the camp site and some sort of small lid.

sounds like a plan! :rockin:

 

[98EXL]

had to share, got this in an email from my buddy who does a pig roast every year

 

[Melana]

We are headed to a pig roast this coming weekend... mmmmmm roast pork and antique cars... Enough to get this girl excited!

 

[MgMt_Home_Brew]

Wow that is a serious BBQ!..... you have inspired me to do this one day

 

[clemson55]

Thats a lot different then the way I have done it and seen it done. We definitely always leave the head on too. You got to put the apple in his mouth for a little show when you open it up.

 

[monty73741]

one suggestion. I would put boston butts in the the stomach cavity. increase your yeld. I used to do this in the country club i used to work at.

Second. why do you have a porta potty in your back yard

 

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Second. why do you have a porta potty in your back yard

Are you kidding? This is the best idea of the party. Try letting 75 people use your bathroom for a weekend.

Great thread! We tried this a few years back with nominal success. I definitely see the light now. I might do this for our Halloween party this year!

 

[Cape Brewing]

Yeah, I mentioned the whole leaving-the-head-on thing earlier in the post... it's your call if you ever plan on roasting a pig this way but I did it one year and it was no-good so I haven't done it since.

And oh absolutely, I've stuff the chest with all sorts of things, a butt, a few ducks, a couple pounds of bacon (you know... for more pig flavor). Anything with a fair amount of fat to it is a great call. I didn't bother this year for some reason... can't give a good excuse why i didn't.

And the porta potty is a GOTTA-HAVE. We have 75-100 people who have been power-drinking all day, jumping in and out of the pool, playing horseshoes and running around the yard.... the porta potty is a hundred bucks and worth every penny to not have people walking from one end of my house (where the back sliding glass door is) to the other (where there first floor b-room is) all day, every three seconds. Plus we have two 125 pound dogs that would be let out every five seconds, running around knocking two-year olds over and eating everyone's plates. It's just worth it for us.

 

[monty73741]

It would have been alot cooler is you would have said OSHA made me do it. LOL


Dude 125 dogs knocking over 2 years olds is funny. Mine do it all the time LOL

 

[ChefBrew]

You just took me back to my childhood. Awesome. Can't wait to do it myself one day.

 

[pjj2ba]

I thought I might as well as some of my photos. This is from last year. I was too busy eating and drinking to take any pictures this year (9th annual). I get the pig from a local hog producer (~$125 for a 100 lb pig - delivered, ready to go!). Only homebrew the past two years!

Our next party is our annual Oktoberfest party, which is getting pretty close to everything homemade. The beer of course and sausages (30 lbs last year) and pretzels. This year hopefully the sauerkraut too, and maybe the mustard.

 

[SuperiorBrew]

Here is one I did for my employees picnic a couple years ago. It got real windy so we made a wind break out of some pink insulation and the side of a building. Want to get a top made for the roaster for the next time.

 

[Cape Brewing]

This last few pics look great...

I thought about using those methods to cook our pig but after a while I just figured, "heck with it, I want it to come out good" and did it my way.

Oh c'mon... I'm kiddddddding! I keeeeed.

These are all good ways. I'm just lazy and don't feel like feeding a fire for 24 hours and I just like the way the pig comes out doing it the "pit method".