Pigs got off the boat in America for the first time in Tampa Bay, Florida, on June 1, 1539. The commander of that ship was the famous conquistador and explorer, Hernando DeSoto who had sailed there in order to (you guessed it) find and steal gold. He brought 13 pigs along as groceries. By the time he died, 3 years later, his little herd had grown to more than 700 pigs. Their descendants are with us today.
Desoto never found the gold he was looking for but it didn’t stop him from forging doggedly on. With a contingent of 600 men, some with shiny metal breastplates and peaked metal helmets, they headed north.
They traveled on foot and on horseback all through the forests of what now are the states of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. Think about it —- On foot and on horseback! They looked for gold all the way to the shore of Lake Michigan, barging through thick brush and trees in scorching weather wearing their metal breastplates and helmets with no additional socks and underwear, no aspirin, no neosporin, no toothpaste, no soap or shampoo and it was 349 years before deodorant would be invented in Philadelphia! No doubt the smart ones elbowed their way to ride upwind.
DeSoto died of a fever in what would one day become Arkansas, a mere three years after he, and his pigs had landed in Florida. They tied him to some large boulders and buried him in the Mississippi River, perhaps trusting that his aroma would go with him. The pigs stayed on as fresh meat for the troops. Some escaped to become ancestors of the feral pigs roaming the woods of America today and others were domesticated and now frolic on hog farms across America.
Sixty years later, Hernan Cortés introduced hogs to Mexico in 1600, then Sir Walter Raleigh brought them to Jamestown in 1607. Wild pigs tore up colonial grain fields everywhere they existed. On the island of Manhattan, a wall to keep out rampaging pigs was build on the north edge of the colony. The name for that area today still remains “Wall Street”.
So, what do you recommend?
Well, The most favored choice of pork for good barbecue is named the Boston butt. However, this cut is actually the shoulder of the hog thus it can be said to be “high on the hog”, indicating a premium part of the animal. Ribs come in at a close second but any barbecue aficionado will tell you that the shoulder is the preferred cut.
So then why is it called a Boston butt? It turns out that in Colonial days, cuts of pork were stored in barrels called “bottes” (from the French word “pipe”) which the locals in Boston called “butts”. The shoulder roasts were highly rated and kept separate in their own “butts” so that they became known in the markets as “Boston butts” and the term subsequently caught on everywhere. Except, oddly enough, in Boston!
It’s always best to buy this roast with the bone in it rather than removed since it adds so much to the meat. Carving such a thing at the table is not a problem because slow cooking for 8 to 10 hours will make the meat come easily off the bone in big, juicy “pulled” chunks. These roasts typically weigh 8 to 12 pounds and I have sometimes had the butcher divide a large one.
By the way, you can do Boston Butt in a regular oven if you prefer. But outside, on a grill over a wood and charcoal fire is the way to get real, old-fashioned barbecue. I much prefer a dry-rubbed roast and avoid at all cost those sugary, sticky, store-bought “barbecue” sauces. If you prefer to mop your roast with a sauce, however, you might try this recipe from an old buddy of mine:
Jerry Collins’ Barbecue Sauce
4 sticks unsalted butter
1 pint apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons worcestershire
1 tablespoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon table salt
Bring to a gentle simmer then remove from heat. Stir occasionally while mopping your roast. This sauce penetrates as opposed to coating. Note the absence of sugar or tomato sauce. (Jerry originally made this to be used on chicken and it does make barbecued chicken truly delicious).
Fossils from Europe and Asia reveal that the pig dates as far back as 40 million years. Apparently they were first domesticated in China about 5,000 years ago and were being raised in Europe by around 1,500 BC. So pigs have a lengthy presence before and during human history.
A conjecture concerning pork taboos
The origin of proscriptions against consuming pork (notably in the Torah and the Koran) seem to have been inspired by the fact that pig meat, particularly in hot, arid lands where the Jews and the Muslims originated, can harbor disease-causing parasites. Tribal elders and priests in these cultures banned the meat to maintain the inter-generational health of the gene pool.
This injunction probably wouldn’t have worked if people knew it came from mere humans so The Almighty was assigned authorship of it in order to make it stick. You might get away with messing with your shaman every now and then but not One Who Regulates the Universe.
American barbecue is a time-honored thing which uses time as a key component. You can’t hurry Christmas and you can’t hurry barbecue. The church picnic, especially in the South, established its place firmly in American cooking. You put the meat on at dawn and by the time the preacher wound down and the choir stopped singing it was ready.
You Can Do This
Dry rub a bone-in Boston butt with salt & black pepper (I use Lawry’s Seasoned Salt). Don’t trim of any fat.
Use charcoal and when the coals are hot, move them over to one side of your grill and place the roast on the opposite side.
Open both the top and bottom vents the width of a pencil thickness.
Leave the grill covered for about 3-4 hours then add a few more pieces of charcoal along with a few small chunks of hickory wood and re-cover the grill. Avoid mesquite wood. Stick with hickory.
I roast this for roughly 50 to 60 minutes per pound from start to finish and take it off the heat when the meat starts to loosen on the bone.
I highly recommend that you never try to do this with a gas grill!
Boston also attached its name to baked beans although the beans themselves were being cultivated and used in Peru and southern Mexico for more than 5,000 years before Boston existed. They are a perfect compliment to barbecue by the way. So is potato salad. So is cole slaw.
I could go on but the charcoal is waiting