Roasting a Pig

[BeanMan]

Thinking of summer  Here is a pig roaster I built in my front yard a few years ago.




Beanman

[FWiedner]

Very nice!

Do you buy your pigs or hunt 'em down?

Do you set the critters over direct heat or do you push your coals to one side and slow cook?  Or maybe your pit is deep enought to bury them?

How does your setup work?

 :-)

[BeanMan]

We don't have feral pigs in Colorado so we buy one for our annual solstice party.  The coals are about 30 inches under the pig and in the middle.  I split the hog down the middle and lay it ribs down (tenderloins removed) and don't turn it.  It sits on a grate made of salvaged gravel shaker screen.  The grate is adjustable in height but i have never moved it up or down.  We use apple wood since orchards are common here.   Last year it took about 8 hours to cook a 209 dressed weight hog.  Every year I get a little better at it as I get more experience, I'm trying to slow down the cooking time and increase the smoke.

By 10 PM I'll have a greasy chin and a beer stain on my shirt.

Beanman

[clodbuster]

Love the pit.  Mine is a rotisserie inside a flat sided fuel oil barrel.  I have it on an axle and tow it around.  The pig is split down the middle and each half is skuered in the rotisserie with stainless pins.  Two inches of sand on the bottom absorbs dripping fat and insulates.  20 lbs of Kingsford along each side is the fuel.   Apple wood adds smoke and great flavor.  One tip learned is to shave off all the fat you can before cooking.  There's still plenty to keep the meat juicy and this speeds cooking time which is 6 hours  for a 200 lb live pig.  I wear heavy rubber gloves when carving the meat off to avoid burned fingers.  Mmmmmmmmm  makes me hungry just tralking about it. Very few around here fail to show up when invited to one of my roasts.

[rockbilly]

I haven't done one since my by-pass surgery, but we use to cook several each year in the ground.  We had a hole about 4x6 feet and about six feet deep.  We would fill the hole wiith a heaping pile of mesquite wood, and burn it down to coals.  A couple of pieces of tin would cover the coals and the pig which was wrapped in tin foil and a wet burlap bag would be laided on the tin, another piece of tin on top, then pile the dirt on and leave it alone for about 8-9 hours.  We would then remove the dirt and the top piece of tin and take the pig out.  All the spices were put on before cooking.  The meat would fall off the bones.  We also did goats this way.

I have seen the mexicans do a couple of deer and several hog heads at one time.  After the meat was cooked, they would strip it off the bone and make tamales.  Boy, that's good eating. :wink:  :wink:  :wink:

[cheatermk3]

Bean Man:
Build you a firebox, like a woodstove, that sits outside of the cooker.  Connect the firebox to the cooker by a stovepipe, with a damper between the firebox and the cooker.  Pipe the stovepipe into the bottom of of the side of your cooker opposite the stack so that the smoke passes through the cooker.

Have a draft on the door of the firebox so you can control the rate of burn.  Put a metal stem thermometer somewhere either set into a well you weld onto or more simply a hole drilled into the lid the stem of the thermometer fits tightly, so you can monitor the temp. inside the cooker without having to open the lid.  Control the temp inside the cooker with the draft and damper of the stove.  My setup has another damper at the top of the "chimney".


You should be able to extend the cooking time at least a couple of hours and you'll surely get plenty of smoke too.  I try to keep the temp at 200 + or - 20 degrees.

A drain in the bottom of the cooker for the excess fat to come out of, into a collection pan, is nice to have too.