Whole Hog question

[food4thot]

Never tried one of those cookers. A friend use to host a pig roast once a summer. Fuel oil drum with a homemade chain-drive rotisserie. Put the pig (usually 110-120#) on around midnight to be ready for late afternoon dinner. Very great memories tending the fire and staying up most of the night.

If that cooker gets the pig done in 4 or 5 hours...?

Yes, take it off the ice Sunday night.

[SOSM]

Good Luck!



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[mchar69]

Yes, take it off the ice Sunday night.

No no no no no Food, look at Amazing Ribs scientific studies
about the "Room Temperature" myth.
Taking your steaks out an hour before doesn't bring them NEARLY to room temp.
It would take 4 or 5 hours for a STEAK to get there.
A pig would take a day. And that is not food safe.

[mchar69]

This from Meathead at Amazing ribs, Meathead and those guys I trust.. they are awesome -

9) We will go straight from the fridge to the cooker. Many recipes tell you to leave the meat out for an hour to come to room temp. To warm a 4" thick log of meat to room temp up will take at least 10 hours, not a good idea from a safety standpoint. Read my article on warming meat to room temp by clicking here. Besides, smoke sticks better to cold meat. So go straight from fridge to cooker.

This for serious reading. Awesome stuff.
https://amazingribs.com/tested-recip...er-beef-roasts

[food4thot]

Originally Posted by mchar69

No no no no no Food, look at Amazing Ribs scientific studies
about the "Room Temperature" myth.
Taking your steaks out an hour before doesn't bring them NEARLY to room temp.
It would take 4 or 5 hours for a STEAK to get there.
A pig would take a day. And that is not food safe.

It's a massive piece of intact (not ground/exposed to contamination) meat that will be in the cooker for hours. No way an extra 6-8 hours at room temp would be a problem, especially since the exterior will get the brunt of the heat first while the inside will still be cold.

Reason I put the night before out there is because I'm highly skeptical that rig can cook the thing in 5 hours, even if it was out at room temp for a day.

btw...I've left thick steaks and roasts out at room temp for 4-6 hours. Never had an issue. I think people worry too much following what they read. Some freak the hell out when I tell them I drink raw milk and love steak tartare and carpaccio.

[Capt]

These boxes do cook pretty dang fast. However I would personally not bring the swine to room temp. its really not necessary. I do however, reduce the amount of ice on my ice chest. you don't want it too terribly cold but you want it to hold around 40-50 just before putting it on. If you have a good thermometer with probes you will want to use it for this. You can't see the pig on these boxes and its much more efficient to not open if not necessary.

score the fat and at the end I like to bring up the heat or get a torch and make sure I get some good cracklin!

Have fun and share lots of pics!

also I would give myself an hour or two leeway on your cooking time and just try and maintain the coals you will need about 40lbs of charcoal.

[Todd S]

The pig roast was fantastic. It took way longer than it should have. We pulled the pig out of ice and injected with mojo sauce.I put the pig on at 7:50 AM. Charcoal was ashed over at 8:30, which is when time is supposed to start. Every hour we added 10lbs of charcoal. Every other hour we removed ash buildup. We flipped the pig from its back down to up at 3:00PM. It should have been ready to flip by 12:30. The ham internal temp was 175. When we flipped it over, we scored the skin. It looked a little pink to me. I checked with a hand thermometer and it showed temp at 158, near the skin. Uh oh. Normally, the skin ably takes 1/2 hour to crisp. This took 2.25 hours. We finally pulled the pig out to rest for 30-45 minutes. That lasted for 20 minutes because I thought a riot was going to break out. My buddy rick and I started pulling from one half of the pig and let people have at the other half if they wanted. The skin was the best part of the whole thing! It was an amazing day with good friends!

I had some friends that have cooked with this box before try to help troubleshoot the cook time. Ash acts as an insulator. I will remove the ash each time I add more charcoal. They said every time the lid is cracked open, it will add an extra half hour to cook time. That was not a problem, because I didn’t open the lid until we flipped the pig. One last suggestion was that the lid was not making a good seal and heat was escaping. I did have my probes for the thermoworks running under the lid half way down the lid. Obviously there was a slight gap there. I wonder if that could have been a source of heat loss.

[Swine Spectator]

Originally Posted by PatAttack

Protect the loins. Don't wanna dry 'em out.

[creek bottom]

Looks FANTASTIC!!! Congratulations on a great cook!!!

[m-fine]

The problem with cook time was not with how you operated the cooker, ash, temp leaks or anything like that. The problem was your initial estimate was nowhere close to realistic.

[BuffettFan]

Looks Fantastic!

[ArnieTex]

Really nice job, whole hogs are real crowd pleasers and fun to cook.

[frognot]

Looks like a successful cook there!

Only thing I know about cooking times is add some extra because it's done when it's done.