(upbeat music) - [Lindsay] These are fresh pigs we get twice a week, delivered. We'll more than likely go
through all of these by Sunday. We're starting with the pig down here because this is the oldest
pig, a couple days old, but these are all newer,
they were brought today. So now we're just gonna take
this pig, get up on the table. - There's several parts of
the country that lay claim to being the birthplace
of whole hog barbecue. Eastern North Carolina
historically has been whole hog, wood-fired. So now the only thing that'll happen is we'll put a little water on the skin. That's just to help the salt adhere to it. And then once that happens, that is the only thing that'll
be applied to this animal until it's finished and
carried inside tomorrow, roughly 18 hours from now. The way I look at it,
I'm the fourth generation of my family that's been
doing this right here. Our evolution has come
this far out of the ground. 'Cause once upon a time they
were cooking in the ground, but then again, if its
not broke, don't fix it. That's whole hog in its purest form. (upbeat music) So this is basically the engine. All the meats that are
served at our restaurant come out of here. Everything we do is fresh, everything is cooked over wood and you know, in my opinion,
barbecue in its truest form is that. There's six whole hog cookers and we can actually cook two at the time. So each grill has the potential of cooking two hogs at a time. And so you know, that's
12 pigs at one time we could cook, if we had to. (wood cracking) First staff's gonna be in
anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 to throw on the ribs,
chicken, turkey, wings, those type of things are
going to go on just as soon as we can get a heat source going. - This is three cases of chicken and we've got it sitting in a brine, which is just salt and sugar. We're gonna take this out of the brine, which only sits in here
24 hours at the most. So Adonias is seasoning the chicken. This is Sam Jones Rub Potion, same one we sell up front
in the smaller containers. This rub goes on the chicken,
the turkey, and the ribs. Only this. So here we have our turkey breasts. They usually come two to three in a bag. These will also be ready
for tomorrow's service. We try to have new, fresh
meat seasoned every evening to start fresh the next morning. These are pork ribs, pork spare ribs. He's cutting the silver skin and the fat cap off of the back so that it'll cook evenly. And then again, he's
gonna start to season. Same Sam Jones Rub Potion. We're gonna load some chickens. Two pieces make a whole chicken. So 1, 2, 3. I try to keep all the raw food together where it's not dripping
on anything finished. In about 45 minutes, I'll come back out and I'll check the color of the turkeys and more than likely just wrap 'em up. We don't want this color to get too dark, again for presentation. And we also don't want the outside to cook faster than the inside. - What we're about to do
now is check this hog. And so, at this point, the meat's done. And, I mean, I know
that from looking at it because I've been doing it my whole life. The fact that the ribs and the backbone are starting
to separate from each other is a telltale sign. You see how much shrinkage
there is on that shank? So when you started cooking, that meat was actually hanging
over that shank a little bit. It's just those visuals, that
the longer you do something, it's like anything else. You stop reading the instructions. And so what'll happen now is always the very last thing we do. We'll take our heat shield out and at that point we'll apply direct heat to this animal. It will allow us to
blister the skin on it. That grill's kind of
plateaued, based on stirring, and it's needing about another 75 degrees. I'm gonna start firing it in increments and bringing it up slow because you don't want it to spike on you. The crisping of the skin,
there's a talent to that. You can cook a whole hog and,
you know, your hog be fine and your skin be crap. It'd be a leathery, rubbery, you know, where it did not get
direct heat applied to it or where you tried to blister it and overdid it or underdone it. You know, that's the
difference between it being, you know, something you
could patch a car tire with and something as tasty
as that natural chip. This is the part where
you can really mess it up. Getting that skin parched,
crispy, but not scorched. At this point the meat is done. All we're doing now is
blistering the skin. We blister the skin and
chop it in the pork. It's probably one of the things
that sets my family's style apart from a lot of the
other barbecue places. So my grandfather opened Skylight
Inn in the summer of 1947. The front dining room is
the original building. It was an octagonally shaped building, made absolutely no sense at all. I have no idea why you would do that, but literally that's what
started in a hole in the ground because that pit that
my granddaddy learned how to cook hogs on now has blossomed to what we've been able to do. And I say we, because even
though it bears my name, you know there's so many
names that stand behind them letters right there that say Sam Jones. When we designed these,
we did these grates with these half inch
bars on six inch centers. And what it does is, you
know, most of the time when you see a grill,
you see expanded metal and you can get the skin to crisp on it, but it's not gonna be as thick. It's almost like the skin
needs somewhere to expand to and do its natural thing. And so what'll happen is
you'll actually see that skin start to parch and blossom almost and blow as if you're
blowing glass or something. Those grills that I was
able to help design, they're made right here in North Carolina. I see 'em go all over the country and people are buying them
to cook whole hogs on. They could probably find a different idea to go about cooking a whole hog, but they're buying that
particular grill to duplicate what we do. Like, the skin's doing all right. I'll add a little bit to
it and then she and I, after literally like
three or four minutes, put that shield back in, let it stay hot, and then it'll finish doing its thing. So Lindsay is, she's a boss. She can cook a hog just as good as I can. I guarantee she will outwork me and you three guys in that
pit house this afternoon to the point that you'd have
your tongue hanging out. - I'm the first female
pitmaster for Sam Jones. I hold that title pretty
proudly, trying to keep up, and I love it out here. When I started here, I started in prep. The line cook in me started hearing the ticket machine go off and seeing that they would get backed up and they would get busy and they would need an extra set of hands. The line cook mentality
said, "Hey, train me on the line, too. I can come help whenever." I asked if I could come outside, they took a chance on me, and as of Sunday, two days ago, I've been out here a year now. - [Sam] So she's about to quarter this up and pan it up, skin up. And what that'll do is
just help preserve the skin as it sits on the pit. Where, right now, it's actually sitting acting as a bowl, you know? So all the rendering to
the fat in the animal are sitting in that skin. By placing it in the pan, turning the skin upright,
just leaving it on the pit it allows that skin to
continue to crisp a little bit as long as that grill stays hot. As soon as we finish the process, it will begin to get broken down. What she's doing now is
we're moving the inedibles and then the skin will
get chopped very fine. You get a little crunch in the bite. Everything's blended in together. I have no idea the origin of why my family's always done that because I don't know of
any other barbecue place that I've ever been to that chops the skin in the meat like that. You know, it changes the dynamic
of the bite, the texture, you know, and it being
that perfect balanced bite. It's been several times,
you know, people ask, but I remember one time in
particular, this guy comes in, he's like, "Mr. Jones," he's like, "You know when that board started, was it already concave or was it flat?" He was like, "No, it's
flat." You know, he said, "Normally, we'll use one a year." And he goes, "Well somebody's eating a lot of wood, hadn't they?" And he goes, well, and you
gotta figure my dad now, he's not ever at a loss of words, has a little flare for the dramatic. And he said, "Well, our
wood chips are better than a lot of people's barbecue." Probably more to a dressing
than I would a sauce. Because you know, so many
times when people think sauce, they're thinking thick, masking. And I think it enhances the actual natural flavor of the pork. I heard my dad say so
many times, you know, "You could put enough sauce
on a napkin to get it down if you had to," but you don't
spend 18 hours cooking hogs to mask it or, you know, to
hide it in a particular sauce. You know, you want to taste
all that time and energy and wood and fire and smoke that went into making that animal taste what barbecue's supposed to taste like. - Aside from the time and the
color, you almost start to, you almost start to connect to your food. You almost start to feel your food. Feel, as in time-wise,
when it could be done. I feel like the more
I've learned the process of how this works, I feel
like I'm feeding my own family and that's the care I take in it. That's the pride that I take in it. I want the same reaction. I want these people to have
a good experience here. And when they compliment
it, I know that it's because the knowledge that I have of food, the knowledge that I have of
these people's taste buds, I know what tastes good,
I know what they want. I know what they wanna see. We eat with our eyes first. The ribs have been on
for about 45 minutes. So now we'll take them out
when they're around this color because now as we wrap 'em, we're trying to achieve, in
a sense, staying this color underneath the barbecue sauce. And we wrap up the turkey
for the same reason. We don't need any more color on it, but we want it to stay juicy and almost baste in its own juices. Now at the same time, the
chickens are probably done. So I'm gonna temp these. These will now come off and go in the restaurant for service. - So this is what we
refer to as the window, some would call it the pass, but basically this is where
the kitchen line comes to a T. We consider this the last line of defense as far as, I always say, when
human hands are involved, mistakes will get made. And so hopefully this is
the last line of defense to make sure the orders are correct, everything looks good, there's nothing outta place to the table. As you can see, we're in full swing here. It's about 20 minutes to 1 on a Tuesday and it's actually a good lunch crowd to be early in the week like this. Can we get y'all anything? - I think we're good. - Good deal. Well thank y'all for stopping by. You know, one, I never thought
there'd be a Sam Jones BBQ. Dag on sure never thought
there'd be one here in the capital city. I think anybody in the restaurant business wants their customers to leave
with a pleasant experience. We try to stay as plain
Jane, I guess, as possible. You know, that smokehouse
screams tradition. And it's not just a yarn we spin you know, we spend a pile of money on firewood. You know, that's not out there in the yard just for a picture's sake. It would probably blow people's minds to know what we spend on firewood for the three restaurants, because we are preserving
what, in my opinion, is a heritage, a legacy that's been passed down through my family. But it is a tradition
of our entire region. And as time goes on, there's
fewer and fewer places that are bearing a torch. You know, there again, that's
another thing I'm humbled by is that we're still able
to bring a traditional Eastern North Carolina
barbecue meal to a table, a nicer table than it used to be. It won't ever be a white
tablecloth in my establishment, but I want people to take
away tradition, hospitality, and so I hope that that's
what the takeaway is, is you know, "Man, that was great," and "the next time I have somebody in town that's not from town, this is
where I want to bring 'em."
