My buddy was celebrating his 40th birthday a couple weekends ago and he asked me if I would smoke a pig for him. I'd never done a whole hog before but I figured why the heck not. He said we'd be cooking for around 50ish people including some kids so I told him to buy a 75lb hog. Naturally, he bought one that weighed 103lbs.
Since I don't have a smoker big enough I told him we could build a cinderblock pit. He found the blocks for free on craigslist and had his buddy weld up some horseshoes for handles on the metal sheets.
When he ordered the hog he said it would come frozen and it would be available the Monday before the party (which was on a Saturday). I was worried about it thawing on time and the butcher said he couldn't thaw it for us due to some regulations. Well the good news is it came flash frozen not frozen solid like I had originally thought (I was worried about it thawing in time). So he built a cooler out of some plywood and styrofoam he had lying around. We ended up picking it up on Tuesday and the ice lasted all the way to Friday when we took it out.
Here is "Marko". His kids named it after their interpretation of a guy named Mark that they know.
All trimmed up.
Put some oil and my own rub on it.
We put her on at around 4:30 in the morning and planned on eating around 6. We just did coals on each end throughout the cook.
Here is our burn barrel. We used apple wood coals throughout the cook. Once it got up to temp it held really well at the 250 degrees I was looking for. Only really needed to put a half shovel of coals on each side probably every 40 minutes.
This is part way through the cook. I want to say it was around 2:00 but can't remember for sure. This was the only time we opened up the pit during the cook.
We stopped adding coals at around 4:30 and then at 5 I opened up the top a little to cool the air temp down and let it rest for an hour. With the bricks warm it still stayed around 140-150 in there which was perfect. I believe the meat temp was around 195 but I had quite a few beers in me at that point so my memory is a little hazy.
Then we just lifted it up and laid it on top of the metal plates on the smoker and started pulling.
Everyone thought it was delicious. He ended up giving away quite a few gallon bags of leftovers. I know you can cook each individual piece to have a better flavor, but I'd definitely recommend trying it at least once. It was fun and definitely has the wow factor.
We also got some work done on Mega Fort since we were smoking right next to it.
Since I don't have a smoker big enough I told him we could build a cinderblock pit. He found the blocks for free on craigslist and had his buddy weld up some horseshoes for handles on the metal sheets.
When he ordered the hog he said it would come frozen and it would be available the Monday before the party (which was on a Saturday). I was worried about it thawing on time and the butcher said he couldn't thaw it for us due to some regulations. Well the good news is it came flash frozen not frozen solid like I had originally thought (I was worried about it thawing in time). So he built a cooler out of some plywood and styrofoam he had lying around. We ended up picking it up on Tuesday and the ice lasted all the way to Friday when we took it out.
Here is "Marko". His kids named it after their interpretation of a guy named Mark that they know.
All trimmed up.
Put some oil and my own rub on it.
We put her on at around 4:30 in the morning and planned on eating around 6. We just did coals on each end throughout the cook.
Here is our burn barrel. We used apple wood coals throughout the cook. Once it got up to temp it held really well at the 250 degrees I was looking for. Only really needed to put a half shovel of coals on each side probably every 40 minutes.
This is part way through the cook. I want to say it was around 2:00 but can't remember for sure. This was the only time we opened up the pit during the cook.
We stopped adding coals at around 4:30 and then at 5 I opened up the top a little to cool the air temp down and let it rest for an hour. With the bricks warm it still stayed around 140-150 in there which was perfect. I believe the meat temp was around 195 but I had quite a few beers in me at that point so my memory is a little hazy.
Then we just lifted it up and laid it on top of the metal plates on the smoker and started pulling.
Everyone thought it was delicious. He ended up giving away quite a few gallon bags of leftovers. I know you can cook each individual piece to have a better flavor, but I'd definitely recommend trying it at least once. It was fun and definitely has the wow factor.
We also got some work done on Mega Fort since we were smoking right next to it.
