Pig Roast

This weekend, Chris and Mandy came to visit, and I thought it would be fun to roast a pig.  So, I took Friday off and built a BBQ pit out of cinderblocks from some plans I found online.  Here's how it went:

This is the site in the backyard.

The first thing I did was turn over the dirt with the tiller, then rake away all the bamboo roots and branches and level the dirt as much as possible.  Then I added the weed block just because I had it on hand.

Then I made a border out of left over pavers I had lying around.  Then I filled it in with river rock that we had left over from landscaping the pool two years ago.  I figured the rock would be better to walk on than mud, and would make it easier to level the blocks.

At this point, I have laid two levels of block.  I got them reasonably square and level.  I'm only going up four levels, so it's not that critical.  I left openings in the front and back for venting and adding fuel.

After the first two levels are put down, it's time for the expanded metal grill.  I intentionally left it short on the ends so that I could add fuel from the top if I needed to.

With the grill in place, I can add the top two levels.  This was the easiest part.

Now I've added the 14GA steel sheets for the lid, and I'm installing grill thermometers.  I used a speed square and a straight edge to find the middle of the sheet.  Then I drilled a 3/8" hole and installed the thermometer.

Grill thermometers installed.

The finished product before I trimmed the excess weed block.

Saturday morning - the fires are lit, and we're prepping the pig.  I built this patio table last year for just this purpose.

The pig, looking up at me accusingly.  She weighed in at 75 pounds.

This is the work area.  We burned maple all day in the firepit so that we would have hardwood charcoal on hand to boost the temperature if we needed to.  Plus it was a bit chilly.

Here is the pig in the pit, rubbed down with olive oil and a secret rub a friend gave me.  I forgot to put the drip pans in before I lit the fire, so I just put them either side of the pig and filled them with PBR.  I don't know if it made a difference or not.

We got the pig on the grill just before 9AM and pulled it off just before 7PM.  What I found was, unlike steel smokers, the challenge is to keep this grill hot enough, as opposed to keeping it cool enough.  With this pit, when you open vents, you get the fire hotter, but you also let out heat.  So regulating tempurature a total guessing game.  We had oven thermometers on each end of the grill, and one on the pig's back.  The first hour we ran a bit hot - probably around 350.  Once we figured out the trick, we managed to keep an average temperature of around 275 for the rest of the day, plus or minus 25 degrees, with a respectable amount of temperature swing considering the equipment and our lack of experience with it.  A bit hot - and the hams turned out a bit dry, but overall it was a resounding success.  If you can regulate temperature on a cinderblock pit, you can dominate using a nice steel smoker.

This is all that was left.  I bagged five one-gallon bags of leftovers, and sent the hams home with Chris.  It was awesome to just pick meat directly off the pig on the grill.  Delicious.