Roasted Pig, Anyone?

We had a pig roast / wild game party at church this weekend.  It was huge success with about 150 people showing up to eat, fellowship, play board games, and listen to some live bluegrass music. Needless to say – it was a fun time.

The best part of the evening was the day before (don't think too hard about that statement…).

One of the men in the church dug a big hole Saturday morning and burned a ton of wood all day. That evening I went over to his house to help prepare the pig and stick her in the ground.  

Originally, we had asked a friend in the community to help us out as none of us has ever roasted a whole pig before. The friend agreed – however, we soon found out that he didn't know much more then we did… While he was present at some previous pig roast, he wasn't directly involved and therefore, couldn't recall exactly what to do.

Never one to give up, we pushed on.

[@more@] Taking the pig, which we had skinned (bad move on our part), we wrapped it in two wet sheets, three burlap bags, and one huge burlap cloth – tying it all down with tons of baling wire. Then we hauled it down to the pit, laid it on a metal grate and wrapped it in chicken wire to hold it up straight (ie. the pig was lying on it's back with the feet sticking up). Cover all that with metal tin, we lowered the grate into the coal pit and buried it.

Fourteen hours later we dug it up – only to discovered that the ground took away all of our heat, leaving the pig 80% done. That was a slightly disappointing… but we pushed on.

Cutting up the pig, we stuck a bunch of it in the oven (three ovens to be exact), leaving the rips out.  Those we put on the grill with a ton of BBQ sauce (I am from Texas after all).

The end result was amazing.