Cooking a whole hog doesn’t have to be that complicated. If you heard that it’s dang near impossible to get right, that’s the difference between somebody talking about it who does it versus somebody who doesn’t. It’s a long process, but with a pickup truck and the right guidance, you could be serving one tomorrow.
You don’t even have to stay up all night to cook a whole hog. At our family restaurants, we back up the start time and leave about five hours of extra cooking time. If a hog takes a little longer to finish than we’d anticipated, there’s no need to rush it with that sort of a cushion. On the other hand, if we underestimated how many hogs we need for the day, or a local decided last minute he needed half a hog when we open the doors, we can push one and get it done in ten hours.
We do everything by temperature. It takes the art out of it. People can romanticize about cooking by feel, but any dummy can cook a great hog if they pay attention to the progress on a meat thermometer. We have talented people working the pits, but we also have new folks who are years away from knowing how to cook by feel.
The timeline we use at Skylight and Sam Jones BBQ is a sixteen-hour process for a 180-pound pig. It’s intentionally dragged out to allow for sleeping soundly between about midnight and six in the morning. If you don’t mind a sleepless night, you can condense the whole cook to as little as ten to twelve hours, depending on the size of the hog. Or, of course, if you’re having hog for dinner, you can start early in the morning and have it ready by evening. I like to leave myself at least fourteen hours to have a buffer of an hour on each end. The timeline we use at the restaurants may vary depending on the time of year and whether or not the pit is already hot, but what follows is the basic procedure.
We light a fire to make wood coals early in the morning. We call it the feeder fire, and it will stay lit all day long, which is what gives our pit room the affectionate nickname of “The Vestibule of Hell.” Even when the fire goes out at night, the chimney never fully cools down. At home, you should plan to light the fire an hour before you start cooking.
The pig hits the pit, skin side up. The skin is dampened with water and is heavily salted. The pit may or may not be hot at that point, but it warms up quickly once you add coals and put the lid on.
A shovelful of hot coals is added down each side of the pit. We always watch the pit thermometer, which should be somewhere between 250°F and 275°F. Once the pit and the hog heat up, the temperature may ride right there for an hour or more, so coals can be added less frequently.
The internal temperature of the meat at the thickest part of the ham (the back hip of the hog) should be 120°F to 130°F. We flip the hog and add one last load of coals to the pit, then close the lid.
Someone from the staff swings in to check the pit temperature. He may have to add coals, or may simply stir the coals already in the pit to kick up the heat, or may do nothing.
The pit cook arrives and builds the feeder fire.
Coals from the feeder fire are hot and ready. They’re added to the pit to bring the temperature up to 250°F. The hogs are mostly cooked by this point, so this brings the internal temperature, which has probably dipped to 140°F to 150°F, up to 180°F.
The hog that went into the pit first is identified. It will be the first to go in the restaurant, so it’s time to crisp the skin on that hog. Coals from the feeder fire are placed directly under the pig to complete the process slowly. At Sam Jones BBQ, the heat shields are removed from inside the BQ Grill to allow for direct-heat cooking. There aren’t any heat shields to deal with inside the brick pits at Skylight.
A sheet pan is placed under the hog, and the hog is cut in half along the spine, then quartered. Two of those quarters, or half a hog, are brought in, and the chopping begins so it’s ready to serve when the restaurant doors open. From there, the remaining hogs will be brought in a quarter-hog at a time for chopping throughout the day. We stage the cooking of the hogs so that all are not ready at the same time. This ensures that the pig served at 3:00 p.m. is the same quality as the one served that morning.
The restaurant opens.
The process begins again with the next day’s hogs.
Skylight Inn closes.
Sam Jones BBQ closes.
At Skylight, where I grew up, we always used pits built out of brick or concrete blocks. They work fine, but when I first took the barbecue show on the road, I needed a cooker that I could haul on a trailer, and concrete blocks weren’t going to cut it. I sat down and kind of sketched out these steel hog cookers. I wanted to have a heat shield to deflect the drippings. If you have a fire, it’s easy to put out and doesn’t ruin the hog. I carried those sketches to Melvin Whitman at BQ Grills in Elm City, North Carolina, and he built a prototype. With a few tweaks, that’s the design we cook with at Sam Jones BBQ. He and I are working on a few new ideas even now. A couple of those steel cookers may have crept into the pit room at Skylight as well.
People might try to crucify us for not building block pits, but what people need to understand is that I can turn out the same product in New York City on Madison Avenue on those steel cookers on wheels as I can in block pits in Ayden, North Carolina. To be truthful, I can do it better in the steel pits because I’ve got more elements of control. I’ve never cooked a pig in those steel pits and had a piece of meat that was scorched. Not a square inch of the hog was inedible.
The heat shield inside the steel pit also disperses the heat evenly. Cooking a hog over a hot bed of coals without that shield, you’re going to have parts that need to be trimmed off. They just happen. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s loss in the restaurant world. You’re already behind in profit by using whole hogs because of how little of the hog you end up serving. If there’s anything you can do to gain ground, you need to do it. It’s also going to take less fuel to cook those hogs in a steel pit than it does in a block pit.
Now I’m not just in this business for the money, but a restaurant has to be profitable. It’s hard enough to make decent money cooking whole hog barbecue over wood, which is one of the reasons it has been disappearing in eastern North Carolina. Hopefully, these steel pits will allow others to get into the business. Keeping a time-honored tradition thriving is only going to happen if folks can make a decent living.
If you’re really dedicated to whole hog cooking, you can buy your own BQ Grill hog cooker, but of course, the benefit of a block pit is that you can build one in your backyard at a moment’s notice for considerably less money. You just can’t move it as easily when it comes time for say, an Easter egg hunt.
Hog breeds are divided between so-called “lard hogs” and the leaner “bacon hogs.” Lard hogs are robust with lots of back fat. When lard was a kitchen staple across the country, these hogs were prized for all that extra fat. This category includes breeds like the furry Mangalitsa and pudgy Ossabaw. Nowadays all that extra fat is used for making charcuterie, but it’s not ideal for whole hog cooking. Much of the fat melts off and can become a dangerous accelerant, as I’ll explain later.
Bacon hog breeds have more muscle and less fat, and are ideal for whole hog cooking. I’ve had success with Duroc, Red Wattle, and Berkshire breeds, but the most common one you’ll find is the American Yorkshire. This lean hog with pink flesh dominates the commercial pork market in the United States, and is likely what you’ll get if you order a hog from any old butcher. It’s also the cheapest.
We have the benefit of ordering our hogs from a supplier called Bar-B-Que Pigs out of Wilson, North Carolina. We’ve been using them for decades, but you probably won’t have the luxury of hog selection that we get, seeing as we’re in the second-biggest hog-producing state in the country. If you have an Asian supermarket in your city, they probably have whole hogs on hand for sale. Any butcher worth their salt will be able to order one for you, but plan a few days in advance. If you have a producer near you that raises heritage breed hogs like Red Wattles or Durocs, you can ask them where you can purchase a whole hog. They may be able to get you a deal. Those same heritage breed hogs are now becoming easier to get in big cities with boutique butcher shops, but be prepared to pay a whole lot more, sometimes three times as much, as you would for a commercially raised hog.
When you figure out where to get a hog, be sure to request the following to save yourself some time: Ask for the backbone to be cracked, as this will allow the hog to lay flat on the pit. Keeping the head is optional, but recommended (you typically have to pay for the head, anyway). If you get the hog head-on, I would suggest having it partially split as well, for the same reason. If, however, you intend to use the head for seasoning or stock (see Hog Head Collards, this page), you can leave it whole. Have the feet removed to allow for more space in the block pit.
Whole hog is an event. It’s not just a meal or a cooking method. Meat cooked over wood is the most basic definition of barbecue, but a whole animal roasting over coals is more than just barbecue: it’s a spectacle.
I was cooking two whole hogs in downtown Kannapolis, North Carolina, the home of the Gem Theatre and both Dale Earnhardts. The skinny: I was supposed to cook for about three hundred guests at an afternoon event for my good friend Vivian Howard at a premiere party for her show A Chef’s Life. By the time it was all over, we’d only gone through one hog and had a whole one left. It was only about six in the evening so, we carried it to the after-party.
Later that evening, we all gathered in the bar at the Hilton Garden Inn. I had been back for thirty minutes or so when I went outside to smoke a cigarette and up pulled a white work truck. Vivian and the driver jumped out, and the three of us grabbed a tablecloth from the back of the truck. Inside was that leftover hog. We brought it right into the lobby of the hotel and sat it on the empty breakfast table. I was a bit worried, but the desk clerk checked with the manager to make sure nobody’s head was going to catch fire—he walked up, studied the pig a bit, and said, “I reckon it’ll be all right. Can I have a plate?”
So that’s what happened: thirty of us standing around a pig on the hotel breakfast table, at midnight, at the after-after-party, just getting after it, true pig pickin’ style. That’s the power of the pig.
I routinely find myself in the midst of this spectacle while giving pit tours at the restaurants, working catering jobs, and serving barbecue fans at festivals across the country. It’s a good feeling to make other people happy through barbecue, and honestly, it only takes a few trips to the hardware store and a stop at the butcher to make it happen in your own backyard.
Cooking a whole hog is more intimidating than it is difficult. But before you go out and buy a hog, remember that this is no small project. A 180-pound hog will feed about a hundred people. It is, however, worth noting that a whole hog party becomes easier by a factor of ten once the block pit and the burn barrel are in place.
Concrete blocks are the choice of itinerant whole hog pitmasters across the country for several reasons. They’re cheap, very easy to stack up, and hold in heat far better than sheet metal. Building a burn barrel (a modified fifty-five-gallon drum) to produce wood coals may seem like a luxury that can be skipped over. It’s not. Besides providing hours of visual entertainment during the long cook, it produces quality coals rapidly. It’s also more efficient than building an open fire, which gives you as much ash as it does coals, and don’t even think about simply cooking with the heat of a big fire in the pit. The hog will be burnt before it’s medium-rare inside.
If you’ve bothered to build a pit and secure a barrel, you might as well do it right. This pit is meant for whole hogs, not half hogs, not pork shoulders or butts. In a whole hog, the liquid fats from all over the body of the pig pool in the center, and the different flavors of those fats mix together. The pool of fat submerges the lean loins, so they cook confit style. All that flavor is trapped within the vessel of the skin. In a half hog, the fat leaks out. Besides, nobody ever says they’re gonna “go half hog.” We call this book “whole” hog for a reason.
You’re going to hear a lot about the importance of crisp hog skin. It’s the ingredient that sets our barbecue apart from other whole hog barbecue. The skin captures more smoke flavor than the meat, so doing away with it would be throwing away valuable smokiness. The crunch of the skin also provides some texture to the finely chopped pork. There’s plenty of fat mixed in with the meat as it’s chopped, but the skin also holds pockets of tasty pork fat that are only released when bit into. In Ayden, chopped pork without skin is like a Snickers without the peanuts.
Cooking a large whole hog like this one is a task for at least two people. My team, specifically Michael Letchworth and Mike “Chopper” Parrott, often works one-handed (because they’re usually holding a beer), so reinforcements are often necessary.
To decide when to start your cook, see this page for a sample schedule.
¼ to ½ cord local hardwood (see step 1, this page)
Safety goggles
Gloves
55-gallon steel barrel
Drill with steel step drill bit
Reciprocating saw with an 8-inch metal-cutting blade
Shovel, preferably with a flat head and long handle
5 concrete stakes, each ½ inch thick and 24 inches long
Hammer
2 or 3 concrete blocks
80 concrete blocks
10 lengths of ½-inch (#5) steel rebar, each cut 5 feet long
2 sheets of corrugated metal, each 2 feet by 8 feet
Drill with ¼-inch bit
Grill thermometer with probe
1 whole hog, approximately 180 pounds, skin on, head optional (see step 4, this page)
Safety goggles
Reciprocating saw with an 8-inch metal-cutting blade
Extension cord
1-pound box iodized salt
2 pairs 12-inch heat-resistant gloves
Probe thermometer
1 large cutting board
1 chopping cleaver
Large tub or sheet tray
1 chef’s knife or serrated knife
Large pan for serving
2 quarts apple cider vinegar
6 cups Texas Pete Hot Sauce
½ cup ground black pepper
¼ cup table salt
Cooking a whole hog over wood coals requires a lot of fuel. Hardwoods like hickory, oak, and mesquite will work well because they produce good coals. I like to use oak because we have a lot of it around in eastern North Carolina. Maybe you’ve got mesquite covering your back forty, or you just cut down a hickory tree. Either will work, as will just about any hardwood I’ve ever come across.
You’ll need a fire that burns for a dozen hours or more, so prepare accordingly. I’ve gotten away with using just a quarter cord, but you won’t need to sweat it if you have a half cord. Besides, any leftover wood can be used for your next whole hog. After you make the burn barrel, stack the wood next to the barrel.
For the best results, be sure to buy dry hardwood. Dry wood means wood that was cut down about six months earlier. Newly cut wood is called green wood. If that’s all you have access to, you can make it work, but it’ll take some extra effort. The water has to be driven out of the wood before it starts to burn. To do this, get a hot fire going and stack the wood high on top of the burn barrel so the wood on top can dry out. You’ll be able to hear the wood hissing and see the water bubbling out of the ends. Once enough water is driven out, the wood will light. Think of it as preheating the wood. Good, dry wood doesn’t need to be preheated.
Wood can dry, or age, for too long as well. If it’s rotted or soggy, or has the density of balsa wood, it won’t make good coals. Not ever. Save it for a bonfire because all you’ll get from it is ash and smoke.
If you don’t have enough wood coals, or you’re running low on wood, you can add what I like to call a bag of cheat. Once there’s a good fire going in the burn barrel, throw a full bag of lump charcoal, paper bag and all, into the bottom of the burn barrel. The hot coals falling on the fire from above will light the paper bag and the charcoal within. You’ll have a mess of hot coals in about fifteen minutes. Keep a bag handy. Getting the hog done properly is more important than being a purist.
Put on a pair of safety goggles and gloves. Remove the lid from the 55-gallon barrel, if it has one, and discard it. If it’s a solid lid, drill a hole in the top of the barrel near the edge with the step drill bit. Make sure the hole is big enough for the cutting blade of the reciprocating saw to fit into. This will be your starting point to cut the top off with the reciprocating saw. Insert the blade into the hole, and cut close to the edge of the barrel, all the way around until the top is completely separated (1). Do not cut off the lip of the barrel as it will not hold up as well.
Lay the barrel on its side and draw lines for the shovel opening at the bottom of the barrel. The top of the opening should be just below the lower rib of the barrel. Use the shovel to determine the width of the opening. I usually end up cutting this opening twice because I forget to measure the shovel width. You can straddle the barrel and sit on it to hold it in place, but it’s probably best to have a helper who is also wearing safety goggles. You can choose to measure twice, cut once, and all that.
Once the lines are drawn, drill a hole in each corner of what will be the opening. The solid barrel floor will be a bit higher than the bottom edge of the barrel, so make sure to cut this opening just above the actual floor of the barrel. Use the reciprocating saw to cut between the drilled holes (2, 3).
Turn the barrel upright to drill holes for the concrete stakes (or rebar, as pictured on this page) using the drill with the steel step drill bit. This allows you to drill holes of various sizes with the same bit, and the need for that will become apparent a few steps from now. The stakes will slide in just above the lower rib of the barrel. They will hold the flaming logs above the bottom of the barrel. This allows the chunks of hot coals to fall between the stakes as the fire burns.
Drill holes for two perpendicular layers of stakes (4, 5). Three will make the bottom layer, and two more will run perpendicular for the top layer. Remember that the holes in one direction should be slightly higher than in the other direction so the stakes don’t hit each other when you’re trying to slide them through (6). The holes on one side of the barrel need to be large enough for the stakes to pass through. The holes on the receiving end should be slightly smaller (just don’t push the bit through quite so far). The smaller holes will receive the pointed end of each stake. After a few whacks with a hammer on the flat end of each stake, the pointed end will be jammed in place for good.
NOTE: Instead of the expensive steel step drill bit and concrete stakes, you can use rebar. It needs to be at least ⅝ inch thick (#5 rebar). It doesn’t hold up as well as the concrete stakes, and will need to be replaced as it sags after a few cooks in the burn barrel. Use a metal drill bit slightly bigger than the rebar to drill the holes in the barrel.
Once all the stakes have been pounded into place, you have a barrel ready for making coals. This barrel is built to last and should easily survive through several cooks. Replace it once it cracks or holes appear in the sides. One great thing about the size is that the barrel fits nicely under the lid of the pit for storage.
Take two or three concrete blocks (you’ll have a few more than you need for the pit) and make a base for the barrel. Stack wood into the top of the barrel and build a fire in the bottom. Cardboard boxes make good fuel for starting the fire, especially greasy pizza boxes. Once the wood above the stakes is lit, a load of wood coals is not far off. If it’s a new barrel, the paint will burn off inside and out.
Don’t let this fire go out. The coals you harvest from it are the only fuel you’ll use to cook this hog. Keep loading the burn barrel and keep the fire going.
NOTE: Dress properly for whole hog cooks. There are sparks everywhere. If they land on your fleece or puffy jacket, those marks won’t wash out. Wear flannel or a wool or canvas jacket that doesn’t easily burn or melt. The sparks that don’t land on your clothes and burn holes in them become ash dust, and it’s everywhere. Wear light gray clothes and a hat to blend in, but you should still expect a few dandruff jokes.
Find a patch of relatively flat dirt or lawn that you don’t care too much about. It’ll be green again in the spring if the pit doesn’t become a permanent fixture. Build a base that’s six blocks long on either side, with three blocks in between the long sides (1). Make sure the edges are straight and the corners are square.
Build a second layer with the blocks staggered over a half-block length from the first layer. A third layer follows, with the blocks staggered again to match the first layer (2, 3).
Lay the lengths of rebar going in the short direction and spread them evenly across the pit (4, 5). Now lay the fourth and final layer (staggering the blocks once again) over top of the rebar (6). Don’t worry when the rebar keeps the top layer from sitting tightly against the layer below. Leaving the final layer of blocks out of one long side will make it easier to slide the prepared pig onto the pit.
NOTE: If it’s cold outside, the pit will benefit from a little preheating. Use the coals from the burn barrel to start a small fire right in the center of the pit. As it burns down, put the corrugated metal sheets on the pit as a lid to hold in the heat. Use the ¼-inch drill bit to drill a hole in the top of one of the sheets to accommodate the thermometer. Just before the hog goes on, scrape the coals used for preheating out to the edges of the pit. Then get a shovelful of hot coals from the burn barrel and spread them out to the edges of the pit.
You’ll need to arrange the purchase of a whole pig. Any local butcher should be able to help, even if just to point you to someone who can sell one (see “Choosing a Hog,” this page). The size of the hog is usually based on the dressed weight (like the 180-pound hog mentioned here), not the live weight, but it doesn’t hurt to clarify. Just as important is knowing if it will come frozen or fresh. Don’t cook a previously frozen hog unless you have no other option.
We live in a state where you can’t swing a baseball bat and not hit a hog, so procuring one isn’t exactly a challenge for us.
Arrange a pickup time as close as possible to when you plan to start cooking, and bring a friend (or maybe two) with a strong back to help pick it up. The hog is not going to keep in your trunk for very long, and I doubt you have a fridge you can fit it in. And remember, it weighs 180 pounds. Plan accordingly when unloading the hog, and later when it goes onto the pit.
Set up a table long enough to accommodate the hog outside or in your garage. A six-foot folding plastic table works well. Clean the surface of the table, or cover it with plastic sheeting or plastic bags. Once the reciprocating saw is plugged in (get an extension cord long enough to reach the table), place the hog on the table, skin side down.
The following instructions may sound off-putting to some. Maybe you have a great butcher who will do it all for you, but I wouldn’t count on it. When I travel to events, our team often communicates with whoever is ordering the hog. I request the proper preparation of the pig, and I even give detailed instructions, but it never, I mean never, shows up that way. Now, I encourage you to send these instructions to your own hog supplier, and maybe you’ll get lucky, but it’s probably safe to assume you’ll have to do some of this yourself to make sure it’s done right. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and maybe even put on your trusty pair of safety goggles.
First cut the sternum to open the cavity fully. Now it’s time to split the ribs apart. Basically, you’ll make one long cut from the tail to the head. Start with the saw between the hams, about where the tail comes in. Cut through the spine, but not all the way through. It’s important not to knick or cut the skin on the other side. The last thing you need is a drain for all the fat to run through.
Continue the cut along the spine and up between the ribs. Push down on the front legs to spread them apart. You’ll hear some cracking. Keep cutting right through the neck and into the head. The neck meat is thicker than the back, so the blade can go a bit deeper. The head can be cut clean through or just enough so the hog splays out flat at the shoulders.
I cut the feet off because they get in the way during cooking, especially when it’s time to flip the hog. Make a cut right through the joint just above the hoof. Discard the hooves or put them on the pit with the pig to make smoked trotters.
You can remove the head if you don’t want to see it staring at you, but a pig will have died for your dinner either way. The pit size noted will accommodate a whole, 180-pound pig with the head attached. Use the smoked head for Hog Head Collards on this page, or just dig into the tender cheek meat for an appetizer. The best few bites come from the head anyway.
When quartering the finished hog for serving, follow these lines. Start with a cut all the way down the spine, then separate one side between the tenth and eleventh ribs (start counting from the smallest rib toward the front of the animal). Chop and serve each quarter, then repeat the cross cut on the other side of the hog.
Task a friend or two with helping you carry the table and the hog over to the pit. This will be easier than carrying the pig itself. With a person on either end of the pig, lift it off the table by grabbing its legs, then flip it into the pit onto the rebar with the skin side up. If the pig is slippery, use a cloth or rag to help get a better grip on the legs. Once it’s on the pit, pour water over the skin, just enough to wet the surface. Cover the wet skin liberally with iodized salt, but not so much that you have a solid layer of salt. One pound of salt should be about right for a 180-pound hog, and should be applied as evenly as possible.
Wash down the table the hog was just sitting on. Clean it thoroughly with soap and hot water, and it can become your chopping table once the cooking is done.
NOTE: A friend asked me to help him cook a hog at his house. All he had was kosher salt. I guess good old table salt wasn’t good enough for him. Anyway, it was 2:00 in the morning when we were salting the pig, so we went with it. Twelve hours later, the hog was nearly done. I was trying to finish it off, but the skin wouldn’t get crisp. I added more coals directly under it, but instead of blistering up, the skin was burning. The kosher salt hadn’t dissolved and seeped into the skin as the finer iodized salt would, and the skin hadn’t dried out properly during the cook. Long story short, use cheap table salt, not some fancy chef’s salt. You need less of it, and it’s easier to find in the store.
If you built the fire in your burn barrel early enough, about 60 to 90 minutes out, you should have coals built up in the bottom of the burn barrel. Keep adding wood to keep the barrel full to the top. You’re going to need a lot of coals.
Wearing heat-resistant gloves is a good idea here. Start adding shovelfuls of hot coals into the pit. These coals won’t go directly under the hog, but instead will line the perimeter of the pit’s interior along the concrete block walls. The technique I use is to stand at one end of the pit and reach the shovel-head full of coals across to the other end. Tilt the head of the shovel toward the block wall and pull the shovel slowly back toward yourself. Shake it a bit as you move the shovel, and the coals will fall down to the base of the wall. You’ll need about two shovelfuls on each of the long sides, and one shovelful on each of the short sides to get the pit heated up.
Once the hog is on, and the coals have been placed, cover the pit with the sheet metal. Slide the grill thermometer into the hole drilled for it, and it will stay here during the entire cook. The target temperature will remain 250ºF for the duration of the cook. When it dips down to 225ºF or 230ºF, add a shovelful of hot coals down each side.
Add the coals as quickly (and carefully) as you can. You’re losing heat as soon as the lid comes off. The longer it’s off, the slower the cook. If there’s an audience, the cameras will come out when the lid comes off, and the shutter clicks will drown out the crackling of the coals. They’ll all groan when it goes right back on, but they’ll be happy that the pig actually gets cooked.
The hog starts skin side up, but finishes skin side down. A flip is required in between. We used to wait until morning to flip our hogs at Skylight. By that time they were almost done and about to fall apart. It was a risky proposition that didn’t make much sense in hindsight, but that’s the way we’d always done it. Any morning could be ruined by a hog that fell apart. Valuable barbecue would drop into the pit, and a river of fat would drain into the fire from the cracked skin. The long and short of it is that our pork is more valuable on a plate than in the bottom of a pit.
About seven years ago, we started flipping the hogs the night before instead. The target internal temperature is around 130ºF, which is usually after about 4 hours of cooking, which means the muscles are still tight. The hog isn’t working so hard against you at that point, so at the restaurant, one person can flip hogs by himself.
A two-person team is best to flip the hog in your backyard. Both should stand on the same side of the pig, one at the shoulders and one at the hams. Wearing heat-resistant gloves that cover the forearms, slide the hog toward you, slowly, while you each reach underneath it with the hand closest to the center of the pit. Find the indentation at the fold of the spine and place your fingers there. Grab the leg closest to you with the other hand in preparation for flipping the hog over away from you. Count to three, and in one smooth motion, while lifting and pulling with the hand that’s under the hog, flip it completely over. Slide it rather than picking it up and slamming it down. Make sure both people flip it together, or you’ll end up with a whole hog bowtie. Once flipped, you should see a nice browning starting to develop on the skin. After admiring the hog, place the lid back on top of the pit.
Keep a probe thermometer handy to check the meat temperature during the cook. I use a Thermapen MK4. It gives a quick, accurate reading, and it’s waterproof. Take these readings at the shoulder or the ham portion.
This first reading is to ensure safety and to prevent spoiling. When it’s cold out, there’s a slight risk of the denser parts of the pig spoiling if you are cooking too slow. That may sound crazy, but I’ve witnessed it.
This is the point where you want to flip the hog. Any later, and it may be too tender to stay intact. You’ll be hit with hog shrapnel, and good meat will fall to the ground.
This is the target temperature. The hog isn’t done yet at this point, but it’s getting mighty close.
This reading in the shoulders means the hog is done or close to done. Use it as a measurement, but not a final determination. One of the signs I look for are the ribs separating from the spine. This may happen first in the center of the hog. The closer this separation is toward the shoulders, the closer you are to the finish line.
It is possible to overcook a pig, especially if it’s lean, but the whole hog cooking process is a forgiving one. Once the pig reaches 175°F internal, back the heat off in the pit to somewhere around 200°F. You can let the pig ride like this for hours until it’s time to blister the skin. In fact, the longer it sits at this low pit temperature, the easier the skin will blister. Just don’t let the internal temperature of the pig climb to the 200°F territory.
This is the target temperature in the shoulders and hams for the hog to be done. It should arrive at this temperature during the process of blistering the skin.
For God so loved the world, he gave us pork skins. Crispy skin is paramount to our barbecue style. It’s what gives our barbecue its signature flavor, and it’s why the cooking method has an extra level of difficulty. Cooking whole hog is easy until it comes to crisping the skin. This is the step where you can most easily ruin hours’ worth of work.
The process really began when the skin of the raw hog was covered in salt. The salt wicks moisture away from the skin, so it can more easily get brown and crisp during the final step of the cook. The low, slow heat of the pit helps dry it out along the way, too. Dry hog skin blisters more readily than moist skin.
About 90 minutes before you want to serve the hog, it’s time to start blistering the skin. Place a shovel of coals down each side of the pit and put the lid back on. This will bring the temperature of the pit up. Your pit will need to be at 275ºF for the blistering to start. You’ll soon see the smoke change from being some lazy plumes to pumping and churning smoke. There’s some pressure building inside the pit because fat is dripping onto the coals. This is where the risk of fire is the greatest. Don’t be afraid to lift that lid and check often. The last thing you want to do is burn that skin. It is the crowning jewel of this whole hog.
Once the pit is holding at 275ºF, spread a few, and I mean a few coals—maybe a half-shovel’s worth—directly under the pig. Place the lid back on and watch the pit temperature closely. The thermometer and volume of smoke are your tells as to whether a small flame-up is occurring.
I’ve cooked a pile of pigs, and there are some hogs where I just couldn’t get the skin right no matter what I did. There are other hogs that were nearly done already when I fired the pit temperature back up.
Keep an eye on the skin as it blisters. The skin can burn as quickly as toast under a broiler or a marshmallow over a flame. Monitor it closely. Check it every 3 to 5 minutes. You can use the back of a knife to tap the skin to know when it begins to crisp. Scrape coals away from areas that start to burn. This process will only take about 20 to 30 minutes.
Once the blistering is done, the hog is ready to chop. If there are still hot coals directly under the hog, use the shovel to scrape them away toward the edges of the pit. If you need to hold off on serving for a bit, be sure not to let the pit cool too much, as this will allow the skin to soften again. Keeping the pit warm will actually make the skin even more crisp.
(1) Raw pigskin. (2) Two hours in. (3) Four hours in. (4) Five hours in. (5) Finished.
Fire the pit and get it heated up to 250°F. Put the hog on.
The hog should hit an internal temperature of 120°F to 130°F. Flip the hog, and add coals to bring the pit back up to 250°F to 275°F.
Four to five hours later, the internal temperature in the ham should be 160°F. From here you can coast to the finish line if you’re ahead of schedule, or keep pushing it if necessary.
By 10:00 a.m., the internal temperature in the shoulder should be 180°F. The hog is done, but the skin is not.
Check the skin for crispness. Add coals directly underneath the skin if necessary and watch the skin closely. Don’t rush this part. At best you’ll scorch the skin, and at worst you’ll start a fire fueled by melted pig fat.
Quarter the hog and bring it to the chopping block.
NOTE: For a 7:00 p.m., whole hog supper, slide the start time up seven hours and begin at 5:00 a.m.
At both Skylight Inn and Sam Jones BBQ, the time line is stretched out a bit. Hogs have a remarkable capability to hold on to their internal heat, so we let them ride overnight.
The hogs go on cold at roughly 34°F and are flipped at around 120°F. Coals are added to the pit as the daytime pit crew leaves Skylight at 8:00 p.m. If needed, another load of coals may go into the pits again around 11:00 p.m., then they coast until the crew gets back at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. The Sam Jones pit house runs a little later because we open later there. But, it’s only a few hours of difference in timing. The processes are identical.
Pit staff will check the hogs to see which one is further along. That hog will be first to start the process of blistering the skin so it’s ready at 10:00 a.m. when the doors open at Skylight.
Remember, in eastern North Carolina, we don’t eat our pork pulled. We chop it. The ingredients for our chopped barbecue are simple, but don’t go thinking it’s just pork and vinegar. The pork has to have the right ratio of lean meat, fatty meat, and crispy skin. At the restaurants, we chop one-quarter of the hog at a time. Rib meat, belly meat, loin, and hams will all get chopped together, so the dry meat from the ham can soak up the extra fat from the belly.
Set up a table near the pit that can be used as a chopping table. Place a large cutting board on the table, and at least one meat cleaver for chopping. Place some damp towels under the cutting block if you’d like. It will keep it from sliding on the table.
Back in the pit, with a knife, cut the hog in half right down the middle of the spine. This will be a little challenging where the skin touches the rods. Then, cut one of the halves in half, between the tenth and eleventh ribs, starting your count from the front of the pig. This will allow easy transport from pit to cutting board. (Or, if you’re feeling flashy and confident, enlist several friends to help you carry the whole thing.) With the heat-resistant gloves on, lift one quarter of the hog into a large tub, hotel pan, or sheet tray, and take it to the chopping table. Leave the remaining three quarters of the hog in the pit, and replace the lid.
Now the bones, cartilage, and gristle need to be removed and tossed. Scoop the meat that remains out of the skin and onto a large cutting block. Continue to look for pieces of bone and gristle to pull out. Once all the meat is on the cutting board, it’s time to evaluate the skin.
Not all the skin can be chopped into the barbecue. Some of the skin, like what you find on the hocks or at the top of the legs, is leathery and needs to be thrown out. The skin that’s brittle enough to crack when you bend it is the stuff to look for. Think toffee texture instead of jerky. Chop whatever skin you deem worth eating into bits. Always chop the skin first. This will allow the meat to stay hotter longer. The meat cools rapidly once chopped, and you’ll be adding liquid seasoning to it, which will cool it further. Add skin to the meat that’s waiting to be chopped.
Two meat cleavers working together are the preferred tools for the job, but one works fine too. Once the meat mixture has been tamed into a manageable mound (but not quite completely chopped), it’s time to add the seasoning.
You may have heard some slander against whole hog barbecue saying that it all tastes like vinegar. Sure we use vinegar, but a restrained amount. We want to add some acidity to the meat, but you’ve still got to taste the pork and the smoke. The barbecue that’s so packed with vinegar it’ll clear your sinuses—that stuff is from joints that cook with gas and have no wood smoke. They need to provide some other flavor to the pork. They do it with loads of sauce.
At Skylight Inn, the ingredients in the seasoning are applied separately. Salt and black pepper cascade down from shakers held high above the chopped pork. Rivers of hot sauce and vinegar flow from bottles and splash onto the barbecue. It’s mesmerizing to watch, like seeing an artist in action. There’s a mystique that comes along with seeing this inexact science at work on top of the barbecue, which itself is the result of an inexact cooking process. It takes training to get the quantities and proportions right.
At Sam Jones BBQ, we had the challenge of a much larger staff who did not have the years of experience of the Skylight crew. If we let them all season things their own way, we’d have some issues with consistency, so we started mixing the sauce in its correct proportions.
The ingredient quantities listed on this page are for about 70 pounds of servable meat, which is what you should end up with from a 180-pound hog, assuming the skin is properly blistered and added to the meat. The proper ratio is 1/4 cup of sauce to 1 pound of meat. Measure out the sauce, add it to the meat, and chop it a little more to mix it all in.
If you’d like more hot sauce, or you can’t ever get enough salt, feel free to sprinkle either on separately to your liking. Remember, you can always add more, but you can’t take it out. Place that seasoned meat in a large pan for serving. It’s party time.
Return to the pit to fetch another quarter of the hog, and bring it to the chopping block to repeat the process. Hopefully the first quarter of the pig is gone, and it’s time for a refill of the serving pan. Chop the remaining quarters of the pig as needed to keep the crowd fed.
If everyone you invited comes, you may end up eating the whole hog. If not, there are several ways to handle the leftovers.
Chop and season all the remaining meat, and let folks carry some home. If folks are gathered around the chopping table, but full of pork, cut the skin up in chip-size pieces because they’ll all find room for another bite of skin. Besides, the skin won’t be this crunchy in tomorrow’s leftovers. Whatever you take home with you will make good cold sandwiches, or it can be repurposed for a stew.
Once all the meat has been chopped and served, if they haven’t already been lured in by the intoxicating smell that has filled the area, invite all the neighborhood dogs over to clean up the ground around the chopping table.
NOTE: The dogs may never leave.
