whole hog bbq

Whole Hog #3: Here We Go Liveblog

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Monk: As an elder millennial raised on Bill Simmons liveblogs in the early 2000’s, it’s hard to believe I haven’t done one myself on Barbecue Bros. What better reason to remedy that than to document my third whole hog cook, which I recently did in mid-October. And here we go…

9/29

Place an order for a 130 pound pig from Frontier Meats out of Waxhaw. They’ve been in business since 1975 and I’ve used them each of the now 3 times that I’ve cooked a pig. From my research, they have the best price per pound in the Charlotte area and their pigs are fresh and never frozen. They will butterfly and can remove the feet and head if you want. Highly recommend them.

10/10

Call Frontier Meats back and up the pig to 150 pounds because whoa, the guest list is now up to 340 total guests.

10/16

9:57 AM – Get a half cord of firewood delivered to the site where I’m cooking the pig. In terms of firewood, I’ve been happy with Quick’s Firewood out of Monroe for the three times I’ve cooked pigs as well as the times I’ve gotten firewood delivered for my fire pit. Plus, they deliver for free. T-minus 30 hours until the Pig Roast.

3:00 PM – Pick up the pig cooker from my neighbor Lawrence and set it up at my neighborhood pool. Lawrence has graciously allowed me to use it for no charge the past two years. It’s a beautiful BQ Grills trailer that he recently got repainted so it looks brand spanking new. He regularly lends out to his friends and local Boy Scout troops for their annual barbecue fundraisers, so I count myself fortunate to have access to a legit pig cooker.

Word on the street he may be restarting his Fire of Coals blog and web store later this year, so keep an eye out for that so you can support him. I’ve used his rubs in the past and I even bought my current burn barrel from him (which is how I first met him).

4:30 PM – Pick up the pig from Frontier, which is about a 50 minute drive on a Friday afternoon from my house in South Charlotte.

6:50 PM – Start the fire in the burn barrel on a toasty 80 degree night. My wife and youngest show up shortly after and then friends of the blog Z and Dabo arrive to hang out an hour or so later. The cook officially begins.

8:00 PM – With Mrs. Monk and two buddies, get the pig from the back of my wife’s SUV on to a tailgate table and then flip onto the grill. Quite impressive when you consider the various ailments between myself, Z, and Dabo (tennis elbow, bum shoulder, burnt hand).

8:20 PM – I shovel the first of many coals into the bottom chamber of the grill. The tunes and beers are flowing as more friends of the blog start to arrive. Matty Ice arrives and brings with him 4 bottles of very nice bottles of bourbon.

11:00 PM – A golf cart with more neighbors arrive just as the Appalachian State football game ends (W over Coastal Carolina) and all of a sudden we’ve got 15-20 of us hanging out by the pig. I now begin to worry that a nearby neighbor who likes to complain about noise will call the cops on us. Thankfully, my worries never materialize.

10/17

1:00 AM – People start to filter out but a few still remain to keep the party going. Whispers of late night Door Dashing begin.

1:30 AM – Z pulls the trigger on a McDonald’s order, reminiscent of last year’s 3 AM order. We eagerly anticipate our burgers…

2:00 AM – The McDonald’s arrives but immediately something is amiss. Two of our Big Macs have a combined one burger patty and we are missing a Cheeseburger. Epic fail by McDonald’s but don’t worry, Z is able to get a full refund.

2:45 AM – Z is the second to last to depart, leaving just me and Dabo. Dabo somehow convinces me to have one more beer before he is to leave.

3:20 AM – Dabo has departed and I climb into a sleeping bag on a camping mat in the back of my car to get a little nap before I add more coals. I add wood to the burn barrel and set an alarm.

4:30 AM – The overnight rain has started and I wake up to add more coals to the pig. I throw a few more logs into the burn barrel and head back to sleep.

5:30 AM – Rain continues and rinse/repeat with the coals and wood.

6:30 AM – I wake up to find that an angel has left me a Gatorade and bottle of water. That angel turns out to be Handsome Russell who checked on me at 6am and decided to let me sleep. However, the fire in the burn barrel is almost completely extinguished because of the rain, so I get to work to get the fire restarted. With a faint flicker amongst the wood, I decide to run to the nearby Harris Teeter to get a bag of charcoal and some fire starter.

6:45 AM – I return to find that the burn barrel has roared to life in my brief absence. We are so back!

7:30 AM – Handsome Russell arrives with a couple of clutch McDonald’s biscuits. I happily accept them. The rain is just about done and I get back to work.

8:30 AM – Tennis buddy Wally brings me some coffee and Bojangles and I count myself fortunate to have such nice people in my life. Here’s a few photos he snapped:

9:00 AM – But wait, there’s more! Friend of the blog Brafford comes to give me a chance to take a shower and also sleep in my own bed for a few hours. I get a couple of hours of sleep before I return right before noon to continue. Big ups to Brafford.

12:00 – 4:00 PM – I continue cooking the pig while starting to set up for the party, with the help of various folks.

4:05 PM – The pig is served until it runs out a little more than 2 hours later. People seem to be enjoying it along with the beautiful fall weather that came in on the back of the overnight storm as well as the 90’s and 2000’s jams from the cover band I hired for the party – 90’s Kids/Y2K Kids.

7:15 – 8:30 PM – Break down the party with the help of many others and head home.

8:45 PM – A celebratory glass of bourbon is in order.

9:30 PM – Crash for the next 12 hours and then finish cleaning and returning the trailer.

As always, there are lessons learned each time I cook another pig and this time was no different. I can’t wait to run it back next year!

NC’s BBQ Fest on the Neuse Puts Whole Hog In Spotlight

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This week we have a guest post from great friend of the blog Sean Ludwig of The Smoke Sheet and NYC BBQ. Sean recently attended the BBQ Fest on the Neuse in downtown Kinston. I have yet to make it to Kinston for the event but after reading Sean’s recap, I have added it to my ever-expanding list of barbecue joints, contests, and festivals for the eastern part of the state.

This article has been reprinted from The Smoke Sheet with Sean’s permission and a minor edit to reflect when the festival took place. Both The Smoke Sheet and NYC BBQ newsletters are invaluable resources for the barbecue-obsessed and if you aren’t already subscribed, I can’t recommend it enough.

On the first weekend in May, an estimated 100,000 attendees showed up for the BBQ Fest on the Neuse in Kinston, North Carolina. The annual BBQ Fest — held alongside the Neuse River — featured food trucks, vendors, live music, rides, family fun activities, and more on Friday night and Saturday day.

The BBQ Fest on Neuse attracted tens of thousands this past weekend in Kinston, NC. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

But the real star of the show for die-hard barbecue fans was the 42nd Wil King Hog Happenin’ BBQ competition — the world’s largest whole hog cookoff. The competition, sanctioned by the North Carolina Pork Council, featured 40 Professional and 47 Backyard teams that cooked hogs on Friday night into Saturday morning. This whole hog competition is one of the top competitions held annually in North Carolina, alongside events like the Newport Pig Cookin Contest.

“This is the largest whole hog competition in the country,” Chris Fineran of the highly decorated Beach Boys BBQ team said. “And at the Newport competition, they have 68 cooks, and every one of them has to compete in the same Professional category. Here it is broken into two different groups. … But everybody shows up. There are probably six to eight prior Pork Council champions competing.”

The BBQ Fest hosts the world’s largest whole hog competition. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

Competitors select their hogs using a lottery system on Friday starting at 8 p.m. and then go to work cleaning and prepping them. No special seasonings can be used, only salt. Teams cook for roughly 10 hours before judges begin tasting and testing hogs at 8 a.m. Just four judges were in charge of evaluating the 40 Professional team hogs, and four judges scored the 47 Backyard teams.

Employees from Kings BBQ Restaurant prepare chopped whole hog for the public at the BBQ Fest. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

Almost all of the hogs and hog parts that are cooked during the cookoff end up being chopped up and served for BBQ sandwiches during the main event. The crew from Kings BBQ Restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina, is in charge of selecting what meat and parts go into the pork and chopping it up in style. The BBQ sandwiches and “bulk BBQ” in plastic containers sell out each year, with this year being no exception.

Around the U.S., traditional whole hog cooking is not easy to find, with only a handful of restaurants still serving it weekly. It takes a lot of hard work but the result is special.

“You can get some of the bacon, you can get some of the ham, the shoulders, the loins, and all that is chopped up together,” Fineran said. “With whole hog, when you put it all together, you got all the flavor profiles with the white meats and the dark meats. There’s no better barbecue.”

Fresh whole hog sandwiches for the public are prepared Saturday morning of the fest. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

During the awards ceremony, cooks who had been up for 40+ hours finally found out the results. In the Backyard category, Kenneth Clark of Backyard Bubba won first place, earning him $300. In the professional category, Billy Narron of Wicked Pig took first place and won $500. (See more winners from the event from the Neuse News.)

Billy Narron of the Wicked Pig team from Middlesex, NC, won the top prize in the Professional category. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

The strangest thing about the BBQ Fest on the Neuse may be that you could go to it and not experience what makes it special. On both Friday and Saturday, thousands of attendees bought tons of non-BBQ food from street vendors, watched popular country artist Easton Corbin put on a show, and checked out classic cars.

But the whole hog competition, which purposely has teams putting in so much effort Friday night and Saturday morning, is not really meant for the general public. That said, I did see a lot of people in the know walking around before the event kicked off on Saturday, and they were able to get some fresh whole hog bites from teams after they had been judged. And the masses can at least try some of the whole hogs in the form of tasty sandwiches throughout the day.

Whole hog is a special type of barbecue. (Photo by Sean Ludwig)

I certainly was glad I showed up early on Saturday morning so I could see teams finish up their hogs, observe the judging, listen to stories from pitmasters, and taste-test a few hogs. If you do find yourself near the BBQ Fest of the Neuse, you should check it out. Just be sure to make friends with the teams cooking whole hogs, and you’ll be able to get the full experience.

Sean Ludwig
Co-Founder, The Smoke Sheet

More from the BBQ Fest on the Neuse (Photos by Sean Ludwig)

Friday Find: Food YouTuber Mark Wiens Travels to Eastern NC for Whole Hog

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Monk: Bangkok-based food YouTuber Mark Wiens visits 5 whole hog restaurants in eastern NC in this supersized video. The visits to Skylight Inn (where he meets with Sam Jones) and B’s Barbecue are of particular interest to me as I’ll be making stops there soon.

Description: NORTH CAROLINA, USA – Welcome to North Carolina, one of the capitals of Barbecue, in the world. Today I’m taking you on an ultimate BBQ tour of Eastern North Carolina which is famous for whole hog barbecue! During this food tour we’re going to 5 of the best restaurants in North Carolina, for Eastern style bbq.

The Skylight Inn, Ayden, North Carolina (https://goo.gl/maps/Wj3t9yRDw464Edmp7) – First stop is The Skylight Inn, easily one of the most well known bbq restaurants in North Carolina, in the United States. They do things the right way, whole hog, slow cooked over smoking coals. One of the best things about The Skylight Inn is when the whole hogs are ready they chop them up, with a ratio of meat, fat, and crispy skin, into an insanely juicy chopped bbq tray. It’s truly a life-changing bbq experience.

Bum’s Restaurant (https://goo.gl/maps/yfWPbidoykXLAtGe8) – Just down the road from The Skylight Inn you’ll find Bum’s Restaurant, another long time bbq restaurant. Along with whole hog bbq, they also have plenty of other southern US foods and great sides. They do their bbq quite differently, instead of being chopped its much more shredded.

B’s Barbecue (https://goo.gl/maps/AgiGLpQPSwhdWDgb7) – Greenville, North Carolina – Next we drove out to B’s Barbecue, a local favorite. I had really wanted to try the chicken bbq, but unfortunately they had already sold out. We barely made it in time to get some whole hog, but luckily we did. It was delicious and so were all the sides.

Grady’s Barbecue (https://goo.gl/maps/1tTj9qgL2guawpK48) Dudley, North Carolina – Another amazing and one of the best bbq restaurants to try in North Carolina is in the small town of Dudley. Again, they do things the right way, slow cooked over coals, the entire pig. Along with the pork, their other dishes, including smoked turkey and bbq chicken, and all the sides were outstanding.

Wilber’s Barbecue (https://goo.gl/maps/6SKdDphpu1mEhcUH6) Goldsboro, North Carolina – Finally to complete this North Carolina bbq tour, we’re eating at Wilber’s Barbecue which is a fantastic family restaurant. Their food and service is fantastic. Also, one bonus about the bbq here is that you can order the leftover or picnic bbq ribs, which are delicious and fun to eat.

When you’re in North Carolina, BBQ is something you must eat, it’s a huge part of the local culture, and I hope you can try some of these best Barbecue restaurants!