2019
Recap
2019 was another successful year, showing marked improvement when really nothing was scheduled. It was spur of the moment, but we nailed two improvements that were a long time (5 years) in the making:
1) Timing - The pig was out of the oven at 6PM sharp, and food was ready to go by 6:15!
2) Cracklins - Finally, we had the crunch in the sandwiches without the worry of losing teeth. It was worth the wait.
I think what everyone is really interested in though…is the graph. I mean… just look at it. I’ll talk about the graph for a bit then pictures at the bottom.
2019 Pig Roast graph. Temperatures were recorded for both the food (pig) and the oven at the shoulder and ham regions. Timing intervals were sporadic and totally arbitrary. Horizontal axis is elapsed time in minutes and the vertical axis is temperature in F.
Even the graph is better in 2019…
The goal for the roast is to keep the oven at an even 200F until the pig reaches 180-200F. With some pits this is easier than others. This year, I was planning on a longer cook (24hrs) so would not add any more hot coal unless the temperature was already below 200. I would always take the temperature right before adding coal (partly why the curve is so jagged).
At around 2AM (#2), I lay down in front of the fire, and set my alarm for 30 minutes. Woke up at 7. Classic. I frantically tried to bring the pit back to temp, but the fire had gone out so I needed to burn fresh logs first. It wasn’t until 9AM until the temperature was back to normal. This was very reminiscent of 2018. Maybe I should just do that every year?
At about 1:30PM, (#3), we flipped the pig just as it hit the infamous ‘plateau’. This is a period in smoking, where <do research and fill in here>. I think it is probably a type of tissue that breaks down around 150-160F, and rather than continuing to heat up, more of this tissue (collagen?) is broken down. Regardless, the temperature of the food starts to drop rather than go up, and its usually a few hours before serving time, so its always very stressful. This graph will help me in future years by showing the plateau can likely last over 3 hours with reasonably steady oven temperature (depends on the animal of course).
At around 5:30PM, or 1440 of elapsed time, we removed the skin from the pig and cooked it in the oven at 375 for 30-45 minutes. Long enough that a lot of fat was released, started smoking, and set off the fire alarm (good note for next year). This was the key to getting the cracklins. We couldn’t deep fry them because we do not have a fryer, but this was plenty hot and the skin puffed up and was cruchy, but easy to eat. Delicious. Here are some photos from the event
