Pig Roast
The uniqueness is the presentation.
After all the guests had arrived, usually about 20 or so, and we had had a drink or two, we gathered on the lawn by the little house. The beautiful, shimmering golden-skinned pig with an apple in its mouth, cherry eyes, and a lei of daisies around its neck nestling in parsley on my father’s handmade platter was presented to our delightfully awed guests.
This exquisite production took skillful construction and master planning, in addition to tending the roasting pig all day.
Shortly after my father built his Lake Lotawana cabin, he designed and built a unique barbecue oven on the hill just above it. This was a large structure built out of native stone and wasn't for grilling a few steaks but for serious barbecue. The lowest part was a fire pit that was large enough to hold three or four full-size split logs. The heat and smoke from the logs were funneled through a chimney at the rear of the structure. The smoke and heat traveled under a large open cooking area that had a grate at the bottom to hold the meat while roasting and was lined by glazed tile that gave a smooth, easy to clean surface. As the heat and smoke passed under the cooking area the amount that introduced was controlled by two baffles that could be regulated by levers (handles) on the outside. If you wanted more heat, you turned the baffles so they were vertical and if you wanted less, they could be closed so all the smoke went directly up the chimney. The cooking area was approximately 3' x 4', large enough to accommodate a 50-pound pig.
One of the hardest tasks was securing the pig. Pig farmers sell meat by the pound, they do not want to sell a small pig. We dealt directly with the farmer and paid a premium to buy a small pig. The next problem was finding someone to prepare the pig. Most butchers were not concerned with appearance. We wanted a pig with its head still intact, with ears, and no cuts on the skin. We negotiated with the farmer then loaded the live pig in the trunk of our car and delivered him to a butcher who would prepare him to our specifications.
We packed the pig’s ears in dough to protect them and propped the mouth open so he could have an apple in his mouth and cherries in his eyes. To slow roast the animal, constantly baste the skin to keep it from cracking and to obtain a good color was an all-day job. Since a 50-pound pig does not have enough meat to feed a large crowd we would cook a couple of large briskets of beef with him and we knew when the briskets were done, the pig was cooked. The tricky part was getting the animal out of the barbecue pit and onto the special serving board in one piece. A cooked pig tends to fall apart. It took two men and careful handling.
“Securing the pig is the hardest part.” My sister, Carol, reminded me of the 200-pound pig episode. One year, Walt Meininger asked my father to roast a pig for a party he was throwing. When Walt brought it, it was a 200-pound pig and much too large for our oven. Walt and my father found a local farmer who would sell a small pig, but they had to catch him. It was winter, frost on the ground, and the pig pen was slippery. They slipped and fell and were covered in barnyard crud, but they captured the pig they wanted.
A pig roast brings to mind a whole pig, the roasting, the eating, the comradery and the festivity. A properly roasted pig is a spectacular sight and well worth all the effort.
Finally, remember that no enormous cooking project will be as simple as you imagine. You see a whole pig, and you imagine the roasting, and the eating, and the joy and camaraderie that goes along with it. But don’t forget the transportation, the setup, the fuel management, stray sparks and coal and ash, grease, estimating cooking progress and correcting your schedule, and of course the cleanup.
If you’re up for tackling all those challenges this Independence Day and roasting a whole pig—perhaps on a spit! What could go wrong?! — more power to you. This is a free country, after all. But remember that freedom also means the right to turn to your humble household oven, to buy your pig in pieces from a butcher as God intended, to set your dial to 300F and completely nix the chances of turning what should be a happy holiday into an Iraq War-style misadventure. Or, hey, there’s always the old, not too complicated standby of the backyard grill, some beers, and some choice beef cuts. But only if you must, patriot.