So h4everything and I decided to put on a deer camp for Oklahoma’s opening weekend of rifle season. His most pressing concern was drowning a fresh bottle of scotch and I was placed in charge of the main course for Friday night.
So it was suggested that we (I) cook him over an open fire via spit. So I set about learning as much as I could about spit cooking. Turns out there is a lot to learn and everyone has a different way. So I gleaned tid bits here and there and finally found some common practices. These include: Cook till done. The rest is up to you.
If you care, here are the steps we (I) took to create the master piece of culinary art that follows.
Scald. There was a bit of debate over the hair. Should we skin him? Should we burn the hair off? Should we leave it on? In the end we choose to scald the hair off. This would have been super duper easy if we had a large enough container to put him in all at once. As it was we were forced to pour pots of boiling water on him, this worked but was super duper inconvenient. We will know better next time. We did use the torch for clean up.
Gut. But be sure to leave the feet intact, you’ll need something to tie to later.
Marinade. Up to you, we (I) used a cheap merlot (ok, ok, h4everything provided wine)
Stuff. We put him on ice for the night and the next day took him to camp for final prep. I used a generous amount of rub, kosher salt, butter and oil everywhere I could rub it. We (I) Injected him with a pint of salt, wine and butter brine. The chest cavity was filled with potatoes, green peppers, onions, rub and four sticks of butter. (I don’t think you can use too much butter or salt) Next stitch him up with something I used aircraft grade S.S. wire because it was handy. But anything that won’t burn should work.
Fire. From what I had read it was going to take one hour of cook time for every ten pounds of meat cooking at around 300 degrees. I figured he weighed about 40 pounds. I was planning on six hours to give me some room for error. I didn’t have a good way of measuring the heat at the spit level. I did however, read that if you can keep your hand in the heat for eight but not twelve seconds you are in the ballpark of 300 degrees. So that was the rule I went by for 6 hours. I also kept a small fire going next to the spit as a source of live coals.
Eat. Well I started cooking him at 12:30 p.m. and by 7:30 everyone had arrived and was ready to eat, problem was piggy wasn’t ready to be eaten. After 7 hours the internal temp was still only 145-150, I wanted to see 165 minimum, 185 would have been fine. The outer 3” or so were fine but the shoulders and hams just weren’t done. By now h4everything was 3/4 the way though the scotch and it was decided that we could expedite the cooking process by adding more heat, lots of it. Well, the golden brown skin that I work so hard to not burn immediately burned. Worse yet the temperature didn’t just climb like we hoped. So we decided to pull him off the fire and cook any questionable meat in the skillet. What was done was border line heavenly, especially the skin/fat, cracklin’s I believe they are called.
I have pictures of the scalding process, but I'm not sure if they are appropriate.
So it was suggested that we (I) cook him over an open fire via spit. So I set about learning as much as I could about spit cooking. Turns out there is a lot to learn and everyone has a different way. So I gleaned tid bits here and there and finally found some common practices. These include: Cook till done. The rest is up to you.
If you care, here are the steps we (I) took to create the master piece of culinary art that follows.
Scald. There was a bit of debate over the hair. Should we skin him? Should we burn the hair off? Should we leave it on? In the end we choose to scald the hair off. This would have been super duper easy if we had a large enough container to put him in all at once. As it was we were forced to pour pots of boiling water on him, this worked but was super duper inconvenient. We will know better next time. We did use the torch for clean up.
Gut. But be sure to leave the feet intact, you’ll need something to tie to later.
Marinade. Up to you, we (I) used a cheap merlot (ok, ok, h4everything provided wine)
Stuff. We put him on ice for the night and the next day took him to camp for final prep. I used a generous amount of rub, kosher salt, butter and oil everywhere I could rub it. We (I) Injected him with a pint of salt, wine and butter brine. The chest cavity was filled with potatoes, green peppers, onions, rub and four sticks of butter. (I don’t think you can use too much butter or salt) Next stitch him up with something I used aircraft grade S.S. wire because it was handy. But anything that won’t burn should work.
Fire. From what I had read it was going to take one hour of cook time for every ten pounds of meat cooking at around 300 degrees. I figured he weighed about 40 pounds. I was planning on six hours to give me some room for error. I didn’t have a good way of measuring the heat at the spit level. I did however, read that if you can keep your hand in the heat for eight but not twelve seconds you are in the ballpark of 300 degrees. So that was the rule I went by for 6 hours. I also kept a small fire going next to the spit as a source of live coals.
Eat. Well I started cooking him at 12:30 p.m. and by 7:30 everyone had arrived and was ready to eat, problem was piggy wasn’t ready to be eaten. After 7 hours the internal temp was still only 145-150, I wanted to see 165 minimum, 185 would have been fine. The outer 3” or so were fine but the shoulders and hams just weren’t done. By now h4everything was 3/4 the way though the scotch and it was decided that we could expedite the cooking process by adding more heat, lots of it. Well, the golden brown skin that I work so hard to not burn immediately burned. Worse yet the temperature didn’t just climb like we hoped. So we decided to pull him off the fire and cook any questionable meat in the skillet. What was done was border line heavenly, especially the skin/fat, cracklin’s I believe they are called.
I have pictures of the scalding process, but I'm not sure if they are appropriate.
