By Bill Wight, cbbqa member
What more brings to mind the vision of Traditional American Barbecue, than a smoked whole hog. Cooking a whole hog is more for show than it is for producing great tasting pork barbecue because doing the whole hog with the skin on, less smoke flavor gets into the meat.
Above, cbbqa member Don Grissom is shown with his barbecue pit and his first whole hog, affectionately known as "Miss Piggy". Don smoked this 50 pound young pig for about 10 hours. He gave the pig a rub with canola oil and then a coating of his secret pork seasoning. He covered the ears with foil to keep them from getting burned. He used a combination of lump charcoal and oak and kept the temperature in the 230-240F range. Here is a photo of Miss Piggy getting carved.
In many barbecue competitions across the country, cooking a whole hog is one of the meat categories. In whole hog competition cooking, the presentation is very important and barbecue cooks go to great lengths to present the hog to the judges in as fancy a way as they can imagine.
Henrietta the Pig, the creation of whole hog master Smokin' John Burke.
Both of the two above examples are of small (50-90 pound) whole pigs barbecued in medium-sized off-set firebox smokers.
CBBQA member and past President, Frank Boyer is an old hand at smoking whole hogs. Here is a whole hog Frank recently cooked for a group of cbbqa members. Click here for details.
Classic American pork barbecue means whole hog cooked directly over wood coals. Some call this the "traditional" style, or the "North Carolina" style, or even the "Southern" style.
One of America's great experts in whole hog barbecue is known throughout the barbecue community as "Bob in Georgia". Bruce Cook had the opportunity to spend some time with Bob, watching and learning from the master. Both Bob and Bruce put their secrets in writing and shared them with their barbecue friends around the world. Click here for details.
For more on smoking a whole hog, check out the section
in the
BBQ List FAQ.
Pork Article Menu
Send us your comments and questions.