Indirect Heat

[Cattywompuss]

Well, it's two days to Thanksgiving, and I'm cooking. To be more specific I'm only cooking one thing: swine flesh. Being southern, I'm far more inclined toward any meat but turkey. I like turkey. My Grandpa(great) Perry kept turkeys at his place in Rincon.

But not for Thanksgiving. I prefer chopped pork shoulder. So I have one of those Walmart $100 firebox grills with cast iron grates and a stainless ashtray underneath. I start coals in one side with a grate removed and when up to about 200°, put the pork butt on.

8-12 hours later, with a good bit of mopping, I have Thanksgiving dinner! It can be replicated in the ground, or over a fire at a suitable elevation.

Dressing the pork with vinegar and red pepper flakes is the tradition as we celebrated it in northeastern North Carolina every Thanksgiving, but one should enjoy it as one sees fit.

Anyone else having a pig pickin for Thanksgiving?

P.S. As I write this I am fondly, almost to tears, remembering those Thanksgivings as a child helping Uncle John cook a whole hog every year. Dozens of Taylors flooded the farm for "The Doin's".

P.P.S. There was turkey too. But it was pulled apart for sandwiches for supper late in the evening as we played Spoons(card game) around the kitchen table.

 

[appalichian hunter]

North Carolina pulled pig, good eatin there, enjoy your THANKSGIVING. Always remeber those that have went before you, therefore they may not be with us in the physical means but they shall live forever.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Well, I do cheat a little. A dry turkey rub all over the pork butt. I put the butt in the oven for three hours covered of course. Then move it to the closed pit, where I let it roast in the smoke another 2 hours. While in the smoke, I use a special concoction of Italian dressing (the mostly oil and vinegar kind), apple butter. tomato sauce and a few squirts of hot sauce. When it is done, I can just grab the bones and pull them out clean. That is our traditional New Years day doins' rather than the pork and sauerkraut roasted together in the oven that local folks eat. I would do it for Thanksgiving, but we do the turkey in the smoker, injected full of apple cider that is just starting to turn toward vinegar. The cider both tenderizes and keeps the turkey very moist.