Epic Pig Roast: We Don't Know How to Do This. (Part Two)

Disclaimer: This ought to go without saying, but some of these photographs involve a very dead pig. If you get squeamish about such things, you should skip this post. And probably any post that has the "slaughtering and butchering things" tag.

To recap: My friend Matt and I are hosting a pig roast. The pig is Beatrice, and she'd been soaking overnight in garlic, thyme, and a citrus marinade all night. You can read more about that here. Now it's the morning of the roast, and our beloved friend, Sarah, has zipcar'd a pickup truck to haul Beatrice and the grill to the park at 6am. Then she went back to bed, and we prepared to spend the next fourteen hours at the park, roasting a pig.

This is what I look like after three hours of sleep. I may be attempting to recreate the Pieta, but instead of looking sad and serene, I look annoyed and exhausted. I'm a realist like that.

At 7am, next to a beautiful lake full of resting Canada Geese, Matt and I straddled a raw pig carcass and, grunting, pushing, pulling, jamming, and becoming more and more frantic, tried to attach it to the spit. We decided, as marinade got in our shoes, as pig juices soaked into our clothes, as we took turns supporting and pushing 60 pounds of pig, that, in fact, this is a four person job. Minimum. It took us about 20 minutes and a lot of anxiety to get Beatrice securely on the spit. I would have loved to show you photos of what was probably, to an observer, a hilarious time, but Matt and I were both far too busy mounting Beatrice to take pictures. Use your imagination.

We finally got her up on the grill (we didn't manage to get her on quite straight, as you can see, but she's secure, I promise!). That morning we had been planning on renting a generator for power, but once we got there we discovered an electrical outlet that had gone unnoticed on our reconnaissance trips. Hooray! However, once Beatrice started turning, the chain on the motor began to slip. Ten minutes into the roasting process, our pig had a crispy, bubbling patch on one side, and wasn't able to turn all the way over. Disaster!

Matt discovered that if he held the chain down with a spoon, he could keep it turning. This technique, aside from being tedious and impractical, also seemed like it would burn off quite a bit of arm hair and be extremely uncomfortable. Before calling the party rental place, I decided to take one group photograph before the day turned into a hellish experience.

You can see the spoon, the patch of skin that bubbled from the heat, and our still-visible, slightly delirious, and quickly waning excitement about our pig.

Luckily the party rental folks answered the phone, and were able to direct us to the huge, totally noticeable knob (see it on the left? by the motor?) that would adjust the height of the chain. This fix worked for the next eight hours, and only started slipping again at the very end of the roast, when it hardly mattered anymore.

Crisis averted!

We spent the next few hours groggily watching the pig spin, adding charcoal and hardwood chips every so often, and trying to to homework.

Around noon, a group of folks showed up with a permit for the space. In all our planning, we'd never seen any permit requirements, or any way at all to call or request such a thing, so this was a surprise. Luckily they turned out to be the most awesome group of folks ever, and were pretty impressed with our pig, so we ended up sharing the boathouse with them for a few hours.

They were Philadelphia Black Gay Pride, and had a bumping DJ, a fat sign, and a bunch of really smart, interesting, super friendly, amazing folks. Matt and I were pretty happy to have some nice people to talk to, and we talked cameras and pig roasts with them for awhile.

People from the Pride event and other folks who passed by the boathouse kept coming in to look at the pig and take photos. It was so gratifying to see so many people who were interested, excited, and impressed with our pig ordeal, now in its ninth hour. We'd started in on the beer around 9am (hydrating!) and had been trying to get through some dense books, or in my case, fall asleep in the sun, so it was particularly nice to have our own folks start wandering in around 4pm.

The pig, which we had estimated taking about eight hours, was clearly not yet done, so we spent some time hula-hooping and goofing off.
 




A wedding party was using the boathouse for some photographs, and Matt suggested that I go ask them if they wanted to take some photos with the pig. (Which I did. This sort of friendship, where we willingly carry out each other's ridiculous suggestions is, as my sister pointed out, how we ended up hosting a pig roast in the first place.)

The couple seemed sort of horrified, but a few minutes later came over, followed by their troupe of wedding photographers.

 

Their wedding was probably less work than this pig.

 

Don't worry, Bea, we still love you. 

Eventually Beatrice seemed about done. We decided to try to crisp her up a little more by lowering the spit a few notches, close to the coals. It got a little stuck, but eventually, and with the support of the growing group of onlookers, we got her down. That's about when the chain decided to start acting up again.

We took the chain off, and got ready to move Beatrice off the grill. I like this photograph, because it looks like I'm super hardcore. Which I am, but not because I can lift heavy things. I'm supporting maybe ten pounds here. And that part of the spit wasn't hot at all.

 

 I also like how excited everyone is. Except perhaps Matt and I – we'd been at the park for over eleven hours at this point.

 

 I was starting to lose it. 

Not to take anything away from the euphoric sense of accomplishment we felt slicing into Beatrice!

 

And then we cut her up, very unprofessionally.

It started to get dark as we were cutting, which made things a little difficult, but we'd set out plenty of food for people, and everyone seemed content to hang out, eat, and talk while we butchered Beatrice.  Some particularly fantastic friends had contributed some dishes: pasta salad, hummus, cookies, chips and salsa, I think someone brought bbq sauce, and we'd also brought some corn, potato salad, apple sauce, and bread.

So much delicious. And that pig skin was so wonderfully crunchy, the pork was moist and flavorful, and everyone seemed happy.

I'm glad it all turned out so well – we got unbelievably lucky in lots of ways, considering we really didn't know what we were doing. We also got a lot of help and advice: from family (sister!), friends, and classmates, but also from people we didn't know, who stopped to talk to us on the street, or in the butcher shop, or at events, or parties, or who stopped by to watch our pig rotate on the day of the roast. It's been a wonderful opportunity to connect and learn from pork lovers everywhere.

And it's now three days later and I still haven't recovered. I'm still exhausted, I keep finding charcoal dust under my nails, and I've got a bunch of pig bones in a pot on the stove. Next time I want roast pork, I'm just going to order a precooked one form Cannuli's. Or get a sandwich from John's Roast Pork.

I am glad, however, that we've proved ourselves undeniably awesome.