Pig Pickins / Backwoods Competitor

We did this whole pig cook for our Friday evening party in June of 2005 at the King City BBQ contest in Mt. Vernon, Illinois for the organizers, sponsors, cooks, and friends in a Backwoods Competitor.

We set the cook up as a "Pig Pickins" where the pig was cooked whole and then prepped to where the guests just come thru the serving line and just "pick" off the meat they want and place it on their plate. It is an old fashioned way of doing a whole hog or pig.

I got the idea of cooking a whole pig upright and on a rack from Candy Weaver who did a similiar cook in her FEC-100 which is another upright cooker about the same size as the Backwoods Competitor.

Myself and my cooking buddy Mike Zinkan teamed up with Randy and Marla Twyford (Ulcer Acres) for this cook and this is how it went.

I had two racks built for both myself and Randy to fit the Competitor on which we mounted the pig for the cook.



Randy did all the hard work as he killed and butchered two pigs that weighed about 60-70 pounds each and got them ready for the contest. It is difficult to get a whole pig anymore with both the head and feet on it so this worked great for our cook. He used the other pig for a later party.

The Competitor is really not designed for pig cooking but with all the grids out and the pig mounted on the pig rack, it will do a great job on a whole pig. We did have to turn the pigs head to the back of the cooker to get it in.



The pig was rubbed on the inside cavity and injected with some good stuff and placed into the cooker. It took about 10 hours to cook and came out looking great.



Marla Twyford, ( Randy's wife) did this beautiful presentation and we gave the people at the contest about 30 minutes to get their pictures before we prepped it for the Pig Pickins. Note the pigs head as it looked like the pig was looking at you as you came thru the serving line.



Since we wanted a pig pickins, which in my opinion is the only way to do a whole pig, we prepped the pig by cutting away the skin and got it ready for the serving line. This allows each guest to pick off the meat he or she wants on the pig going thru the serving line. I cut the skin from the top of the head right down the back to the tail and laid the skin aside.



Got our guests started thru the line and they sure did enjoy the event. Several of the guests brought a dish so we had plenty to go with the pig.



The pig went quick!