Macon Magazine

26 l Macon Magazine october/noveMber 2013 wrapped and ready to go in half-an-hour. We would further prep the hog by rubbing it down with a mixture of paprika, garlic, onion, cayenne, salt and pepper, jerk spice and apple cider vinegar. We did this about a half-an-hour before we started cooking. For this particular cook, we used an open pit, almost as simple as it gets – a five-by-five square on the ground covered in fire brick and surrounded by cinder blocks. A metal grate about 20-inches tall lays over the top. Vic's family cooked on pits like this during his childhood. "My paternal grandparents had 7 children and 18 grandchildren," he said. "Cooking like this served to keep the kids out of the house, the men in one place, and the women in the air conditioning, though it also probably served to keep the negative aspects of being around so many family members to a minimum, I'm sure." Chad's family is also steeped in barbecue. His father taught him recipes from both sides of his family that helped give birth to the Georgia Bob's Barbecue franchise. While studying comparative literature at UGA, Chad perfected those recipes and helped start the first Georgia Bob's in Warner Robins soon after he graduated. "My largest attraction to barbecue was that, in the South, the process is mystified, like a Masonic secret, only there really isn't a lot going on, which is why so many family traditions involved so much hocus pocus. In the end, it's large pieces of meat. Cook them low and slow. You can rub them. Inject them, whatever. Those treatments, usually, are so minor when you consider the size of the protein that it doesn't matter much. Feel free though, to dance around it, sweat in the sauce, or put your ancestors ashes in it, too." KEEPING THE FIRE RIGHT It's all part of the fun. But it's true. Keeping the fire right is the most vital part of any long cook. And the more open the pit, the harder it becomes to keep an even temperature across the whole hog. If you get that wrong, the hams get done before the shoulders and the ribs get burned up. We used a burn barrel that we'd put large chunks of cured wood in on a grate. The coals would then drop to the bottom of the barrel, where there was a door used to shovel out the smoldering coals. We used the shovel to spread the coals on the firebricks evenly, and we moved them around until the temperature got right. And this is a process that happens during the entire cook. As the coals burn out, you add more, you move them around, you repeat. The perfect temperature for a whole hog is 225-250 degrees. Depending on the occasion, holding this temperature can be even more difficult. Things like football kickoffs, sleep deprivation and alcohol intake have ruined many a hog cook. If there wasn't a chance that you'd wake up on the ground next to a cold pit and a crispy hog, with the sun coming up in your face, nobody would have ever started cooking this way, probably. There is also the man- factor that goes into this. For example, on this particular cook, we had two brand-new oven thermometers we used on the grate to help gauge the temperature. By the end of the day, we were convinced neither of these instruments Vic Stanley, le, Chad Evans and Brad Evans

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