Last week we hosted a group of judges and officials from the annual Sonoma County Harvest Fair. We decided to go whole hog, so here’s what we did.
We called our friend and neighbor Lou Preston, who supplied us with a 74 pound (dressed) pig. We took her to the winery where we put her in brine (50 gallons water/10 pounds salt/5 pounds sugar) and filled the tub with ice (50 pounds). There she sat for 36 hours. We pulled her out, dried her off, and let her sit for six or seven hours.
At 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning we lit a fire with oak logs in our smoker. After an hour and a half there was a nice bed of coals, so we placed the pig in the smoker. We kept the fire going at a temperature of about 225 by adding a log to the fire every hour or so. We would occasionally mist the pig with a spray mixture of soy sauce and cider vinegar.
By 3:00p.m. Friday afternoon we had internal temperature reading of about 150, a sign that the pig was ready. We took it out of the smoker and let it sit for an hour and a half.
After that it was skin, slice and serve with slaw and baked apples stuffed with bleu cheese.
Oh yes, and a variety of Taft Street wines!