Going Whole Hog: What You Need To Know To Smoke Roast A Hog Or Suckling Pig

There are few BBQ or grilling main courses that command more attention than this one. Now learn how to cook a whole hog the way the pros do it!

But before you commit to smoking a whole hog, keep this in mind: It is a lot of work. If you screw up you are embarrassed in front of a large crowd, and it is easy to screw up. But most importantly, keep in mind that this is not the best way to cook pork. There are lean tender muscles like the loin and tenderloin that are best at about 145°F (62.8°C), and tough sinewy knots of muscles like the shoulders and hams that won’t get tender until they hit 200°F (93.3°C) or so. What you end up doing is cooking everything to the higher number and then shredding it, dousing it with sauce, mix in some crunchy skin, and have a massive pile of pulled pork.

The best way to cook pork is to break the animal down into individual cuts just like your butcher does: Shoulder (make Perfect Pulled Pork), ribs (make Last Meal Ribs), loin (stuff them or make chops), tenderloin (make Sweet & Sour Pork On The Grill), hams (smoke ’em), belly (make Maple Bacon), skin (make Cracklins), cheeks (cure them for guanciale), scraps (make Italian Sausage), and bones (roast them to make soup and stock).

But when it comes to whole hog, there is no place that takes it as seriously as the folks in the Carolinas. When you order “barbecue” in the eastern parts of North or South Carolina, you are usually ordering chopped meat from a whole hog, and many joints in the Southeast feature a “Pig Pickin'”, a sumptuous buffet featuring a whole hog on display. You just sidle up to the table and pluck off whatever you want. When lunch is over, there is nothing but a few bones. Even the skin is gone because, when it is cooked the way I describe below, fabulously crisp “cracklins” become an essential part of the feast.

Hog roasting is a time consuming meticulous process that requires vigilance and more than one person. But there is no meal you can serve that is more impressive. And if you don’t want to cook a monster hog, you can cook a suckling pig. I describe the methods below.

The pit

If you want to serve a whole hog, you have several options:

1) Hire a pro

2) Get a portable pit from a rent-all service

3) Borrow a pit

4) Buy a pit

5) Build a pit

Nowadays most caterers and restaurants use specialized cookers for hogs, but a handful of old timers like Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC, and Jackie Hite’s Bar-B-Q in Batesburg-Leesville, SC, still do it old school, on concrete block pits, with log embers for heat. You can do it old school too for very little money. Just click here and follow my design for an old school hog pit (and see a picture of Jackie Hite and his pits).

If you rent a pit, consider gas. Gas pits are really easy to control, and you can still add wood for smoke. Charcoal and wood require non-stop vigilance.

Why hog cooking is tricky

Ask people if they’ve ever had roast pig and, if they have, their response usually is “Feh. Nothing special.” That’s because it was not cooked properly. And cooking it properly is tricky. But you can pull it off with some planning, some help, and my instructions.

The challenge with whole hog is that there are so many muscles of different thickness with different degrees of fat, sinew, and collagen. The hams, the large rump muscles on the rear legs are the thickest and most dense muscle group. They are best when smoked to about 145°F (62.8°C) and sliced. The shoulders are slightly less thick, and they have large fatty deposits within. They are best when cooked to about 203°F (95°C) and shredded. The loins are lean and tender, not nearly so thick, and they are best at about 145°F (62.8°C). Tenderloins, thin tubes of the most tender meat on the hog, are also best at about 145°F (62.8°C). The curved ribs are on top of the loins, and they are heavy with fat and collagen and connective tissue. They’re best at about 190°F (87.8°C). The bacon is mostly fat and it can go to 200°F (93.3°C). To make matters worse, there is a lot of sinew, globs of fat, chewy membrane and silverskin that can seriously get in the way.

It is impossible to hit all these numbers so you must compromise, but there are tricks to get everything tender and juicy.

Cooking times at 250°F (121.1°C)

Cook low and slow. Normally I tell readers to cook most foods at 225°F (107.2°C) and to learn how to peg their cookers at that temp, but if you don’t crank the temp up a bit a hog can take forever. So we’ll take it up to 250°F (121.1°C) or so. That’s the temp recommended by the late Mike “The Legend” Mills of 17th Street BBQ in Murphysboro, IL, a whole hog whisperer. Don’t worry, it won’t dry out. There’s lots of fat in there to keep things lubricated and sealed.

At that temp, here’s how long it should take. Approximately. Give or take an hour. Maybe. Hopefully. The pig is ready when the pig is ready. The pig is in control, not you. The pig abides. Remember, the cooking time depends on the thickness of the meat, not the weight, but since thickness is related to weight, we go by weight. Plan on these times, and if piggy is ready early you can shut down the heat on the pit and hold it there for an hour or two safely.

40 pounds (18.1 kg), gutted, head on: 3.5 hours

75 pounds (34 kg): 9 hours

100 pounds (45.4 kg): 12 hours

125 pounds (56.7 kg): 15 hours

150 pounds (68 kg): 18 hours

175 pounds (79.4 kg): 21 hours

200 pounds (90.7 kg): 24 hours

Approximate timetable for a 75 pound (34 kg) dressed hog

The day before. Build the pit, or clean your pit if you already have one. Pick up the hog and keep it chilled.

A week or two before. Order the hog.

6:00 a.m. Dress and clean the hog, inject and season, prep it for the pit. Fire up the pit. Aim for 250°F (121.1°C). Drink some strong coffee as you work.

8 a.m. Find an assistant/pigsitter and move the pig to the pit, skin side up. Remember to remove the pit lid before hoisting the hog. Monitor pit temp closely, add lit charcoal if the temp is declining. Have a mimosa.

9:00 a.m. through 2 p.m. Monitor pit temp closely, add lit charcoal if the temp is declining and check to make sure dinner isn’t burning. Switch to beer at 12:01.

10:00 a.m. Remove the foil from the ears and tail.

2:00 p.m. 6 hours into the cook, check the meat temp, and with some help, flip it skin side down if it is ready. Have a beer.

4:00 p.m. 8 hours into the cook, check the meat temp, paint the entire cavity with one coat of your favorite barbecue sauce. Have a beer.

4:30 p.m. One more coat of sauce. Have a beer.

5:00 p.m. 9 hours in, check the meat temp, remove the hog if it is ready, and serve dinner! Have a beer.

Want to learn more? Take a class and see how the top pros do it.

Amy Mills runs OnCue, a consulting service for barbecue restaurants, and her Dad is Mike “The Legend” Mills. They conduct an annual two-day “Whole Hog Extravaganza” at the family restaurant, 17th Street BBQ in Murphysboro, IL, about two hours east of St. Louis. The year I attended they had a luminous faculty: Sam Jones of Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC; Brad Orrison of The Shed Barbecue & Blues Joint in Ocean Springs, MS; John Delpha of The Belted Cow Barbecue Bistro & Grill (CLOSED) in Essex Junction, VT; as well as The Legend himself. Many of the photos on this page are from that event.

So the cattle wouldn’t feel slighted, they had three cooks demo their brisket techniques: Wayne Meller of Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, TX; Barry Sorkin of Smoque BBQ in Chicago; and Mills.

Many of the photos on this page were taken at the Whole Hog Extravaganza. Best of all, we got to eat the demonstration hogs and briskets! Click here for more photos of the event.

Video: Here’s how Sam Jones does it in North Carolina

Video: Here’s the whole process in a video from Hungary

Suckling pig: Small enough for your grill

So you don’t have 50 friends or a place to build a pit? You can still do a pig roast and create magical meat with a young pig. Technically suckling pigs have not been weaned are less than two months old, weigh less than 25 pounds (11.1 kg), but butchers call anything under 50 pounds (22.7 kg) a suckling. The muscles haven’t toughened yet, and the milk-fed meat is melt in your mouth. There is much less fat in proportion to muscle although the fat can be somewhat reminiscent of an aged brie, a bit funky for some.

The procedure is pretty much the same as for an adult hog. If you wish, you can lay the little critter on its side for roasting and stuff the cavity with fresh herbs, garlic, onion, and citrus rather than a spice rub.

You must cook with indirect heat or you will burn the skin and get to meet the fire department. Cook at 225°F (107.2°C) until the temp in the deep center of the hams is only 145°F (62.8°C). You don’t need to cook it hotter because the muscles and sinew haven’t gotten tough. Depending on the thickness, it could be done in four hours or less.

I’ve been known to serve this meal cave man style. No knives and forks. Just fingers and plenty of paper towels. Flesh fest.

Skylight Inn style hog

Sam Jones’ family has been doing it pretty much the same way since 1830. He starts with a 160 to 180 pound (72.6 to 81.6 kg) hog, a weight that he feels has the best fat-to-meat ratio and produces his ideal yield of finished meat and optimum juiciness.

He just salts the meat liberally, flips it, wets the skin with water, salts it some more, and puts it on the pits, about 2′ (61 cm) above the bottom, skin side up with oak coals pushed off to the sides, never under the meat. Wetting and salting the skin makes it blister and easier to chew. You don’t get shiny showy skin, but the skin is scrumptious.

The hogs go on at about 4 p.m. at about 275°F (135°C) and he and his staff tend them closely til midnight adding coals as needed. They then cruise unattended, while the temp declines slowly, til 6 a.m., get flipped, and come off around 2 p.m., 22 hours after going on.

He seasons it when it comes off the pits with a gentle hand using nothing more than salt, pepper, Texas Pete Hot Sauce, and cider vinegar. No fancy rubs, brines, mops, marinades, or sauces. Then he chops it fine, mixes in some chopped crunchy skin (which he call’s “God’s natural potato chip”), and serves it on a bun on top of hashed slaw, or on a paper boat with another boat of slaw and a thin slab of cornbread. That’s his entire menu. Pure Americana, man. Tastes like history. As he says “It is what it ain’t”.

Competition style hog

The Memphis Barbecue Network (MBN) sanctions a number of competitions, the largest and grandest being Memphis in May with hundreds of teams smoking it out in three categories: Pork ribs, shoulder, and whole hog.

When learning how to cook a whole hog for competition, realize that special attention must be paid to many of the different sections of the hog. Whole hog cooks must present the judges with a showy animal and then serve them tastes of the hams, shoulders, and loins. It is here that cooks demonstrate the most impressive range of hog cooking styles imaginable, and showmanship.

Some cook the hog on its back, butterflied flat or cupped “boat style”, some sit the hog on its haunches, some lie the animal on its stomach, and a few cook “running style” – standing up – the most impressive display.

Brad Orrison’s team from The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint restaurants in Ocean Springs, MS, Gulfport, MS, and Mobile, AL, produce a magnificent specimen, running style, shown at the top of this page. Pitmaster Hobson Cherry expends serious time and energy to get the back straight and make the mahogany critter look as if it is heading somewhere, which I suppose it is. They even have a stainless steel armature that they have built allowing them to adjust the back, head, height, etc. This method means a little less bark because the inside is shielded by the side flaps, and the skin is not very chewable, but she is a beauty! That’s Cherry on the left, Orrison on the right, and the gal in the middle is Dinner.

To serve, they use a razor blade knife to remove a square of skin on their side of the table and reach in to pull out the loins, shoulder meat, ham meat, ribs, etc. That keeps one side showy. Here she is about 30 minutes later.

For catering events, Mills flips a 150 pound (68 kg) animal on its belly and presses it into a squat, head up, legs pointing forward, similar to the way a dog lies in the “down” position. This gets more heat into the cavity and creates a better bark, Sections of wire coat hangar hold the ears up, and balls of foil hold the flaps of side skin out so she looks nice and plump.

The whole upper body is wrapped in foil to prevent the skin from burning. After about six hours at 250°F (121.1°C) the foil is removed so the skin is exposed and it takes another two to four hours to finish. To serve, he also cuts a window along the spine above the loins and reaches in from there.

Whole Hog Chinese style

Many Chinese cooks roast their hogs by hanging them by the rear legs in their large cylindrical ovens shown in my article on Chinatown Char Siu Ribs. Here is the kitchen of Sun Wah BBQ on Chicago.

Porchetta: Whole hog Italian style

Across Italy, they make some of the tastiest pork you can imagine, called porchetta. The concept goes back to the Roman Empire and it is sold everywhere from white tablecloth restaurants to street vendors.

If you want to learn how to cook a whole hog this way, it is worth noting that they make it a little differently in each region. In the areas around Rome, porchetta is usually made from a whole hog, with the torso gutted and deboned and then stuffed with herbs, tongue, heart, liver, and kidneys. It is then stitched up like a giant football, and cooked on a rotisserie in a wood-burning stove over a pan that collects the juices which are used for basting. The skin is left on encasing the meat in crunchy cracklins. Think of it as a giant sausage.

That’s the way it is done in Costana in Umbria, near Assisi, where they have an annual festival to celebrate the dish, the Sagra della Porchetta, in late August.

Just south of Rome, the town of Ariccia is to porchetta as Kansas City is to ribs, and commercial producers there ship it all over the country.

Lechon: Whole hog Filipino style

Cebu is one of the largest islands in the Philippines and is renowned for its whole hog called lechon. Learning how to cook a whole hog, Filipino style, begins with the seasoning. The cavity is rubbed with spices including star anise, salt, pepper, and stuffed with herbs, onions, peppers, other vegetables, lemon, and more. The pig is stitched up tightly and turned slowly on an open air bamboo spit by a “lechonero” who rolls the bamboo spear back and forth along the lip of the pit until the meat is cooked and the skin golden and crisp. If you chose to cook a hog by rotisserie in the open air, beware it will take a lot longer than if it is roasted in a closed pit because the heat is hitting one side at a time, then it cools, heats, cools, etc. There are several commercial rotisseries available at a reasonable price shown in our equipment review section.

Here’s a link to Anthony Bourdain’s visit to Cebu and the lechon they cooked for him. Here’s some more on the topic and still more.

Kalua Pig: Whole hog Hawaiian style

Kalua pig is the Hawaiian variation on a traditional Polynesian method of cooking a whole hog. The ritual is practiced daily in many restaurants and every night for the benefit of tourists. Interested in learning how to cook a whole hog, Hawaiian style? First you dig a hole at least three feet deep and five to seven feet wide. Then you line it with softball size rocks, cover them with logs or charcoal, start a bonfire, wait til the rocks are heated through and the logs have burned to glowing embers, then you cover the rocks with fresh moist banana leaves or corn husks, and then a layer of wet burlap. This in-ground oven is called an imu.

The hog is lowered into the pit on a wire stretcher, hot rocks are placed in the cavity, it is covered with more leaves, husks, or wet burlap, then a large wet canvas, and finally the whole shebang is covered by the dirt from the hole.

The meat steams in the underground almost oxygen-free oven and when it is unearthed it is extremely moist, tender, and falls off the bones. Alas, the skin does not get crispy as it does in dry roasting.

The Cajun Microwave

In the past few years, at least two companies have introduced “Cajun Microwave” type hog roasters. Learning how to cook a whole hog using one of these is actually quite simple. Each is a large metal lined box, the hog rests on a grate within, and the lid holds the charcoal on top. The heat radiates down from the top and cooks the hog very quickly. It produces tender, juicy meat, but there is no smoke flavor. Read about them on our page devoted to pig roasters in the equipment reviews section.

A North Louisiana pig roast

This is excerpted from Deltablues.net:

When learning how to cook a whole hog like it is done at a North Louisiana pig roast, the normal procedure is to start roasting the pig at the crack of dawn. The fellow throwing the pig roast calls a couple of buddies, and they spend the afternoon killing and cleaning the pig.

The next morning and usually with a hangover, they build a fire, wrap the pig in fence wire, and then hang the pig beside the fire. Since they have nothing to do the rest of the day but stand beside the fire and season the pig and turn it every once in a while and, since it’s a cold winter morning, that’s a damn good time to pass around a bottle of Old Stumphole 90 proof sour mash. At lots of pig roasts, the fellows who started the pig to roasting are sound asleep at eating time.

The best place to have a pig roast is any place but your place. That brings up an unwritten redneck cultural law. Everybody is invited to a pig roast. If you’re driving through North Louisiana redneck country and you notice what appears to be a bunch of drunks gathered around a fire over which hangs what appears to be a burnt pig, stop your car or tourist bus and join the party. You’re welcome. Just bring your own beer and whiskey. And don’t say anything bad about George Jones or Hank Williams.

Shoat: Whole hog Civil War style

This recipe is from Civil War Interactive and spelling is correct as quoted.

Ingredients

1 quarter of a young pig

Salt and pepper

Molasses

Lemon juice

Melted butter

Wine

Method

Take either a hind or fore quarter, rub it well with salt, pepper, and a small portion of molasses, and if practicable, let it lie for a few hours; then rinse it clean, wipe it dry with a cloth, and place it on a large gridiron, over a bed of clear coals. Do not barbecue it hastily, but let it cook slowly for several hours, turning it over occasionally, and basting it with nothing but a little salt water and pepper, merely to season and moisten it a little. When it is well done, serve it without a garnish, and have the skin taken off, which should be done before it is put down to roast, squeeze over it a little lemon juice, and accompany it with melted butter and wine, bread sauce, raw salad, slaw, or cucumbers, and stewed fruit. Beef may be barbecued in the same manner.

The first roast pig

The first roast pig was probably a wild animal caught in a forest fire, but there is an alternative theory as told in this marvelous story: Dissertation on Roast Pig.

It was written by Charles Lamb, an English writer whose essays often ran to the fanciful and humorous. His version of the discovery of roast pork was first published in 1822. It is believed to be the source of the common idiom “burn the house to roast the pig”, meaning, essentially, overkill. It is probably also the source of the name cracklings for cooked pork skins, and explains why so many barbecue cooks are called Bubba. Clearly Mr. Lamb was a pork lover.

Scape pig

You’ve heard of a scape goat? Here’s a scape pig:

An aged farmer and his wife were leaning against the edge of their pig pen when the old woman wistfully recalled that the next week would mark their golden wedding anniversary. “Let’s have a party, Willard,” she suggested. “Let’s kill a pig.”

The farmer scratched his head. “Jeez, Ethel, I don’t see why the pig should be punished for something that happened 50 years ago.”

Let’s get cooking!

Now that you understand the basics of how to cook a whole hog, it’s time to fire one up yourself using the recipe below. As you get started, also be sure to read my article on planning for a party. I have rounded up the quantities below so you won’t run out.