Single Barrel Hog Roast

When we were trying to decide what to do for the all of the Husker football games at Single Barrel we were wanting to come up with something a little different than just the same typical foods that every body else would serve and we wanted to do our version of a tailgate. So someone (we can't remember who) had the idea that since all of us chefs at Single Barrel loves pork why not do a hog roast. It just seemed to fit with what we were all about. So we decided to test it out for the spring game.

When we talked about this with Travis from TD Niche Pork he was really excited about it. He has always been extremely excited aboout us using his pork at Single Barrel and I've always wanted to use his pork in a restaurant because his pork is superior to anything else that I've had and I can't wait to highlight it full time on our menu. Anyways, back to the meat of this post. After talking with Travis about getting a pig he offered to come and help us pull the meat off the hog and serve it and I quickly took him up on his offer just for the fact that I thought it would be cool to have the producer with us and I figured who else would know more about it than the guy who raised the animal.

Here is the star of the show. An awesome Berkshire hog from TD Niche Pork. It was a 100 lb carcass perfect for our needs.

I decided to take out the leaf lard on the inside of the hog for other uses.
Ross seperating the ribs from the backbone to flatten it out so it would fit inside our grill. We were all kind of excited about doing this for the first time so we all got involved in the prep.

The hog all rubbed down with our Cocoa-Chilie rub ready to go.

The hog in our grill at 4 AM. This was the only real draw back of this whole thing was that we had to get to the hour lounge by 3:30 to grab the hog to get it over to Single Barrel where we were cooking it. I would like to see the security cameras from behind the bar. Ross and I showed up about 30 minutes after everybody left, pulled his van up to the back door and ran inside grabbed the pig (that was wrapped and tied nicely in plastic) and tossed it into the back of his van jumped inside and took off. I'm sure it looked just like a body pick-up in a mob movie. If someone was watching they probably would have been asking some questions.

The star of the show fully roasted and inside.

The Single Barrel hog crew (left to right): Ross-Chef de Cuisine, Travis-TD Niche Pork, Angela-Sous Chef and myself.

Travis and me pulling the meat

All that was left of the hog when we were done with it.

When all was said and done the hog roast went great. It was really cool when we carried the cooked hog into the dining room and everybody turned and looked to check it out. Based on what everyone was saying the hog made the whole room smell great. The whole thing seemed to go over really well and I think our new tradition is going to be a huge success when we get into the regular football season.

Beer drank while writing this post: Organic Best Ale by Samuel Smith Brewery out of Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, UK