1st Annual - 2015

Special thanks to Scott for all the help building the pit and saving the pig from being engulfed in flame. Bob for helping on the line.

How we started

The annual pig roast got started after Taq suggested I read Cooked by Michael Pollan. The book was inspiring on many levels, but most notably (in this case), it discussed the joy of cooking whole hog. For me, the selling points were the hard work, patience, and skill required - and the reward was a necessarily large group of people all enjoying good food together. What a great way to celebrate friends, family, and community.

After a few brief discussions, Taq and I dove in head first and started to plan out our first pig roast.

Planning

Based on Cooked, we (read: Jeff) was obsessed with doing North Carolina style BBQ. I’ll admit my personality is…opinionated.. when it comes to food. In my defense, I wanted to learn how to cook the pig, and I knew it was going to take practice. NC barbecue does not use marinates or brines or rubs or sauces, just a pig on a stretcher for 20hrs with smoke. For me, I think I wanted to remove variables and ‘masks’. Also, you could just read the book. It really sells NC barbecue.

Since then, I have pretended to chill out and have even suggested mixing it up for 2019…

After quite a bit of research, we were ready to start the prep for the first roast. Amazing Ribs was a huge help for research, as was this blog. We managed to get some recycled bricks, and built a pit that was both hideous and extremely inefficient. Luckily, we built it early enough to know that we needed to line the inside with foil to keep enough heat in for it to work (four or five test runs).

We had a successful pig roast this year - but no-one took any pictures and writing for a website is difficult. So if you want to hear about how the pig was almost engulfed in a self fueled grease fire, you’ll have to ask in person. Otherwise, check out the successive years for more ‘lessons learned’.