whole pig question

[spanky]

I got the chance to work on a large cooker this weekend, on the menu was a pig stuffed with whole chickens and misc. other stuffing ingredients. when it was all finished and ready for serving I noticed that some of the meat was kind of mushy. Does anyone know what might cause this. I have had other pigs and I do not recall any of the meat being mushy. Any info would be of great help. All in all I had great time and got to further inhance q'ing skills.

[BBQchef33]

Were you basting the entire pig while cooking it??? .... basting some of the areas that are naturally very lean , like the loin, can make it mushy. Basting anything with no fat surrounding it only breaks down its texture and tuns it to mush.. Its hard to get every part of a whle pig to cook perfectly at the same time.

[Bigdog]

IMHO, whole hog is way overated. As Phil just said, different parts of the hog need to be cooked differently so parts tend to be overcooked and dry. I would much rather have them cook up a bunch of butts for some yummy pulled pork.

[jminion]

I was able to learn some techniques from teams like Jack's Old South and Pig Pounda Kappa a couple of the top hog teams from the MIM circut. They cook the hogs on their back and drying out is not a problem. These hogs are injected with a couple of gal of marinade and another gal poured into the cavity of the hog as it cooks. The juices and rendered fat mix with the marinade and are mopped back up on the hog. Drying out is not a problem and the flavor can be dicated by your recipe.

Mushy meat is from acidic marinade or injection and/or over cooking that muscle in question.

[spanky]

We had also done it on its back, there was no need for a mop because it was stuffed full of fruit and there was water in the bottom of the cooker. maybe because there was so much moisture and a long cooking time it acted similar to a crock pot. Maybe the mushy meat syndrome is caused by the methods use. I guess only experimentation will reveal the secrets. Thanks for the imput all