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PBS station. Welcome to BBQ With Franklin. Well, today's episode is
all about whole hogging. And cooking a whole hog
can be a little tricky, but if you have wood,
a pig, and a lot of patience, it could
turn out pretty good. Get ready for a pig pickin'. When I get ready to
cook a whole hog, the first thing I do is go
talk to my local butcher. - Morning, Aaron. - What's up, yo? - Hey, how you doing, man? Good to see you. - How you doing? - Good. - So I'm looking to
cook a whole hog. Got any tips? - Just like wine,
you know, pigs need three things to be really
good and terroir is one. The land they live on, how
they move around on that land, the feed that they're given
and the rations and the ratios and then breed and
genetics, you know. Get a good breed,
get a good smoker, and have plenty of
time dedicated to
working it, you know, that's kind of
the cardinal rule. You know, don't rush it,
let it take its time. - Don't cook too hot. - But, I know you,
you're probably gonna smoke this bad boy, so... - Well, actually, I'm
going to direct coal. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, I'm gonna go
some Carolina style. - Oh all right,
awesome, fantastic. - Is there a generic kind of cook down weight
on these things? Or I mean, I'm sure
it's pretty breed specific. - Well, you figure usually
about two pounds per person. You're gonna lose about
50 percent to the cooking and to bone loss and
inedible, basically. You know, feed 50 people,
get a 100 pound hog. It's a good rule of thumb. - [Aaron] So, what kind of
breed should I be looking for? - Well, you know, we
like our Red Wattle here. They marble very nicely,
especially the loins. The hip and towards the
loins, you get a lot of nice marbling, but they also
have really large muscles, so you're gonna get a
nice yield out of it. I see real consistency
in them, like and we roast
ourselves these days and every time we've done one it turned out really exceptiona. Are you thinking about doing any seasoning or brine injection
or anything like that? - Well, you know I'm a little on the fence about it, actually. Thinking about soaking
it overnight in a brine. Which I've never done before. - That's definitely
a good way to go. But you know, you get
a natural sweetness from that pork
when you roast it. It's really nice to keep
everything away from it and just let that pork taste
like what it's supposed to. - Let it do its thing. - Yeah. - Well, Red Wattle it is. - Well excellent, man. We will get you fixed
up for sure, man. Absolutely.
- See you in a couple days. You bet. - This is where we're cooking
the whole hog, the backyard. But the one thing this
backyard is missing is a pit and since we're cooking
this hog Carolina style over direct coals,
we've got to build a pit and it's gonna take
about 50 cinder blocks. So, it's time to get to work. Whoo-wee. Well, we've got our cooker built and now I think it's
time to go get a pig. (laughs) So, I remember the first
time I cooked a hog. Oh, I burned it to
a blackened crisp. The meat was great,
the skin was burned. There are a lot of
different ways to cook one. Like on a spit, you
know, over an open fire. Down in Mexico there's
some other ways where you kind of
build these racks and hang them up over the fires. I kind of like the
Carolina style. I really appreciate
the direct coal method. It feels pretty old school
to me in a lot of ways. It's certainly akin to
the way we cook barbecue. Traditionally, it would
just be salt and pepper and some red chili
flake, a vinegar mop and that's pretty much
it, so we're kind of going a little outside of the
normal traditional parameters. We're actually going
to do a 24 hour brine which I've never done. I'm not as well-versed
in cooking whole hogs as I am brisket or
other Texas-y cuts, so it's trial and
error, see what happens. Hey, how you doing? - Good, good. - You got my pig? - I do man, come this way. - All right. Oh, cute little guy. How much do you think
this pig weighs? - Weight should
be on the inside. You definitely want
to be sure that when you're buying a hog,
that they're marked. Right there, 70.
- Ah, 70, yeah. Go ahead, I'll meet you
out towards the back. - Cool. Got it?
- Got it. - Alrighty. Get it in there. - There she goes! - Thanks, yo. - Awesome, man. Appreciate it. - Check you later. - Yeah man, enjoy. See you soon. - Alrighty, so we're back
here in the backyard. We got little piggy. And I've got my
buddy Fiore here to help. We're gonna prep
this thing and get it stuck in the brine for 24 hours. Are you ready? - I'm ready. - Let's go. Tickle tickle! (laughing) We've got a whole carcass here. It's already got the
insides pulled out of it but we need to crack the spine, 'cause we're gonna
splay this out. That way we can get
the mop and the rub and everything in there. I'm gonna start
right about here. That's where the
vertebrae start, there. You find the center of
it, take your sharp axe. (pounding) And it's possible
that the hatchet will get a little off center. Just kind of correct it. - [Fiore] She's looking
pretty good so far. - Yeah. Now some people would
use this as an excuse to maybe use like
power tools and stuff. You don't need no
stinking power tools. So pretty much it's
gonna kind of pull off all this fat
and stuff in there. You just kind of want to trim it and just kind of clean
it up a good bit. Every rack of ribs
has a membrane. This is kind of where the
organs go inside the pig. A lot of times, they're
kind of slippery so you can kind of
use a paper towel. Once you break it loose. The paper towel just kind
of helps you grip things and hopefully, if you're lucky, it'll all come off in one pull. And if you're not,
well then it didn't. - Like what's
going on over here. (laughs) - All right, so we're just
kind of hosing this thing out. Getting the dirt,
checking again for bones. Gonna kind of just rinse it off
with water, nothing special. Now we're gonna flip it over. And this is the dirty side. So there's dirt behind the ears. Did you wash your ears? - That reminds me. - So we're injecting
the pig with a brine. Made a real basic apple
cider vinegar brine. It's got four gallons
of water, one gallon of apple cider vinegar, and two
cups of kosher salt, that's it. (laughs) - Cheers, bro.
- Ding! - We're gonna keep this
pig in here for 24 hours. We've got our little piggy fully submerged in ice
water with a brine. I'll check you later. - Thanks, buddy. - Thanks for helping. - Yeah. - See you tomorrow. So this is where
we kind of deviate from the traditional
Carolina style. Ten, 15 onions. That's a Texas onion. Little bit of garlic. (chopping) And then, I've got a little
rosemary from the garden, some sage and some thyme. Some apples, let's
live a little. Oooh, oh, man that's cold! Alrighty, so we've got
our piggy in the brine, we've got aromatics in there. We're gonna wait 24 hours. Tomorrow, we pull it out,
we clean off the skin, we dry it off real nice, we rub it down, we build fire, we cook. So if you're looking to
host your own pig picking, something you'll
need to consider is what type of hog
you're going to cook. You could cook a heritage pig. With heritage, you're
getting a happier pig raised in a healthy environment. In my opinion, they
taste a whole lot better. On the other hand is commodity. These pigs are
raised with profit and quick harvest in mind. You're gonna pay a lot
less for commodity, but I like knowing our
little piggy was happy. Where there's open land, there's
bound to be a pig farmer. Richardson Farms is
one of the biggest hog farmers in the
area, so it's a great place to see some happy
little heritage hogs. What does it take
to raise a good pig? - Well,
it takes
good care. You know, humane care,
where they're not stressed, and it takes
time. You don't want to rush 'em. Pushing 'em with
anabolic steroids like they do in some factories, and they say it's
growth promoting. It's really covering
poor management. You know what
happens is they get all lean and no fat,
and fat is flavor. - Well, and it seems
like that was even a trend back in
the 80s and stuff. You know, like lean, lean, lean and that couldn't be
further from the truth. - Absolutely, you know,
that's why pork lost favor. Once it gets to the
store in that package you lose all the
story, and so we think if they're not stressed and
they've got good husbandry and good places to live
they just don't get better. - Isn't that true
for everything? - It is, people as well. So it's no different
than us, you know. They just want to be happy. We're primarily
trying to increase the fertility of the soil. You know, with animal
impact, with manures, with grazing
animals, with keeping the crops growing all the time. I grow alfalfa and I grow oats. - You really try to
keep it a sustainable... - And diverse, and that's
kind of the way the pigs are. They are diverse. What I've got here is
Berkshire Red Wattle Cross. I've got Hampshire
Red Wattle cross. I've got Duroc Red Wattle cross. In the cross-bred
situation you get what's called hybrid vigor. This cross from this
purebred and that purebred gives you a pig that's
vigorously growing, it's strong. - Right, and that's
kind of the idea to get something that grows
fast, produces marbling quickly. - Sometimes you lose a little
bit of vigor in pure breeding. - Yeah. - You know, and so
some of these lines that have been bred the same-- - Get kind of diluted
after a while. - They run out of
genetics, really. They're kind of inbred
and they lose some of their strength
in their genetics. - The ones with thumbs growing
out of their shoulders? - Sort of. I hadn't found that yet
here, but we got wattles. So we're going somewhere. - A wattle growing
out of their shoulder. I think it's pretty special
to be able to see this. Most people just go to the
store and grab a piece of meat and it's like a
packaged piece of meat, but not everybody really thinks about where this is coming from. It's not just a piece of
meat, it's an animal's life. - It is, you know, and
I say here all the time these pigs have a great life and they only have one bad day and they don't know
when it's coming. And when I go to
slaughter, all people at the slaughter
take care of them. They don't kick 'em,
they don't beat 'em. I really think the
pigs are special. I don't want anybody
hurting them, you know, and they're here and this
is part of the cycle. Feed 'em well, treat 'em well,
compassionately manage 'em. - Yeah. - That's what we do. - I think that's the greatest
part of the whole thing. You can really tell how much
love you guys put into it. - We hope so. I think everybody
that ever comes here and sees the sunrise
here and hears the pigs and the clanking
waters, when they leave they know this is a happy place. - Oh yeah, for sure. Man, that was awesome
talking to Jim. Learned so much about pigs. I gotta get back
to Austin, though. So when you're
cooking a whole hog, you don't have to
be thinking too much about where all the cuts
are, but it's always good to know the basics. The most confusing
things about pork cuts are the names we have for
the legs and shoulders. The shoulders are
actually called butts and then in the back,
you've got the ham. The butts are what pulled
pork is generally made from. And between the hams and butts we've got some
other familiar cuts. There's the pork loin, and
behind that, the tenderloin. The loin is where
your babyback ribs and pork chops come from. If we follow the ribs down,
we get to the spare ribs. That's the cut we
typically use in barbecue and outside the spare
ribs, we get to the belly and that's where the
bacon comes from. Lastly, we come
around to the hams. They're what your
Christmas ham comes from. And it can be prepared
any number of ways from curing to smoking. Now for our pig cook,
we're gonna end up mixing all these cuts together. But I think it's
always good to know your basic hog anatomy. Just hosing little piggy down. Gonna get the
aromatics out of there. Gonna wash the brine off. Just get it good and cleaned up. So really, this gal's
looking pretty nice. Been sitting in
brine, really got a lot of water weight in there. It's looking like
it's gonna turn out to be a really,
really moist pig. I'm happy about this. I'm gonna do a mustard slather. This is real, super
duper standard. If you'll notice, I'm not
getting any mustard on the skin, 'cause the skin's kind
of its own entity. We're going for crispy
skin, but we're going for really heavily
seasoned, flavorful meat. And this is a rub. It's mostly pepper. I backed off on the salt since
the brine was pretty salty. It's got a lot of paprika. Keeping it real
simple on the rub. Nothing too special. Got a pretty good amount
on the hams down here. Butts are under all this,
so I think that's enough. Time to flip it over and
start patting dry the skin. Just gonna get the skin as
dry as you possibly can. And in the meantime, all the
rub's setting on the meat side and the paprika's gonna
kind of sweat into the meat a little bit, the
rub's gonna soak in a bit. But this gives it
something to do. The skin's looking pretty good. And now for the crown jewel
of any whole hog cook. Apple? Now that I got the
skin pretty dry, I've got the meat side
already rubbed down. I want it to sit on there
for a little bit longer. I want the pig to come up to
room temperature a little bit, so I'm gonna put a couple
box fans on this thing to help dry out the skin just a little bit more
while we're waiting. And just wait about
20, 30 minutes. Alrighty. I think it's time to get
this piggy on the grill and I'm worried
our good friend may be a little slippery, so
I'm using some towels. Oh, not light. I'm gonna take a towel. I'm gonna touch up the
skin just a little bit because it made a
little bit of a mess. So, I'm keeping
the skin as dry as I possibly can, no
rub on the skin, 'cause I'm treating it
as a separate entity. Alrighty, lids are on. So what I'm going
to be doing, is I'm going to be shoveling
coals in these two doors. I'm only gonna put 'em under
the butts and the hams. No coals under the ribs,
and no coals anywhere else. I want the butts to
stay under 225 degrees of grate temperature,
and I want the hams to stay under 215 degrees
at grate temperature. Rest of your night is
gonna be spent here, sitting in a chair,
standing up, watching the coals, watching
the coals, making sure this little piggy
is getting cooked. Just not too fast. (relaxing music) Okay. Our little piggy's been
cooking for 18 hours
right now. Now it's time to
probe this piggy to see if it's tender and done. And I think it is. So, probing the
butts right here, and what I'm really going
for, more than anything, is I'm looking for feel. I want the meat to feel loose. I don't want it to have
a lot of resistance. 203 is kind of my magic number. This one's at 202, and
it feels real good. I can feel that the meat's just pulling apart in
there, real tender. I'm also gonna temp my hams, and I'm looking for
about 185 to 195. You gotta be really,
really careful with these two hams right here. There's not much fat,
they're kind of like white chicken meat, they
dry out crazy, crazy fast and that's why we were
keeping hotter coals here and lower coals here. Feeling pretty good. Meats kind of pulling
apart pretty nicely. And then, just for fun, I'm
gonna poke in the bacon. And that's between the skin and the rib, and that feels awesome. See the bacon kind of
pulling apart right there? That's gonna be the good part. Alrighty, so this hog's done. In the meantime, I'm just
gonna let the coals die out. I'm gonna keep it warm. Looking to hold about 140. We've got guests showing
up in about an hour, so it's time to get
ready, and then we're gonna have a real
live pig picking. (chatter) - So are we gonna
eat this, or what? - No, I've actually
got some tofu. Swing it up. We're gonna start pulling
some meat apart, I guess. Ah, the loins. Yeah. Oh man, these hams
are about right, too. Look at that. Ham's like totally moist
and done the right way. I guess we could
just lay that, oh! Oh my gels! It's the bone yard, matey! All right, so I think
we're ready to eat, yo. Grab a plate, grab a
bun, grab some beans. We'll throw some meat on there. There are three saucees. One is a sweet sauce,
and then another one's just a Carolina
style vinegar sauce with hot peppers
and stuff, and then just kind of a Midwestern Kansas
style sauce with tamarind. Anyway, go for it! (chatter) So cooking a hog is
obviously really hard work. It takes a long time, but
the payoff is that you get to have your homies come over
and you get to have a party. In the meantime, keep sending
those barb- Sha na na na na na. Oh, don't be bashful. That was a close one. Cut?
