Hog Roast

Well folks, it was an eventful Saturday at the Hollar house.  Despite illness earlier this week, we had a non refundable hog on order and something had to be done.  As it was our first time attempting to smoke an entire pig, we were frothy with anticipation and excitement.  What began as a box in our bathtub (too big for our freezer):

...was soon unwrapped and this sad looking grey pig was placed on the grill:

Now the next step was smoking ole Wilbur here into a fall apart, delicious mess.  Aaron brewed up some of his famous Carolina style vinegar based sauce.  Here is the recipe:

white vinegar

apple cider vinegar

hot pepper sauce

red pepper flakes

salt and pepper

brown sugar (dissolved in vinegar stove top with the remainder of the ingredients)

This delicious sauce was injected into the pig for the ensuing 10 hour period while it smoked slowly with hickory wood and charcoal.  We got the smoker on clearance and it did us well.  Here was the (nearly) finished pig:

It was quite a feast, and we ended up saving a huge amount of pork for the coming weeks.  Nice kickoff to the first beautiful weekend we've seen in many months.