Pig in a pit

Over the years my wife and her father have piled a fair amount of junk in my backyard, which, to put it mildly, is a bit of a disaster.

It’s a good disaster in some ways, which is to say it has grapevines, a big greenhouse, a chicken coop (complete with an effective electric fence, just ask my daughter’s dog, Murphy, who seems to touch it with his big wet nose almost every time he visits. Murphy has the brains of the average wood pile.) and nearly a dozen fruit trees.

But there’s also a great big pile of scrap wood and various others pieces of junk. One of these days the boy and I are going to haul it all away, but one these days hasn’t come yet, which is to say everytime I consider spending the day hauling the wood to the landfill, the woods sirens start calling and the next thing I know, we’re on some trail in Glacier National Park.

Next summer, for example, I have to paint the house, but I’m still hoping I can write a book or some other project and make enough cash so that I don’t have to do it myself. On the other hand, if I paint it and make it look real nice (I’m thinking white with green trim) it will only mean my taxes will go up even more.

But I digress.

This column has nothing to do with house paint, it’s about big chunks of meat, Namely, pork shoulder. If you keep your eyes peeled on the meat department, you can pick up a big chunk of pork shoulder for less than a buck a pound. I did just that the other day and then plopped it into the freezer.

I then went into the backyard and started digging a trench with a shovel. It was a pretty warm day for December and the ground wasn’t frozen. I kind of like digging holes. It’s mindless, but satisfying work.

At any rate, I dug a hole about three feet long and two feet wide. A passerby would have figured it was a grave for a pet.

Then I started a small fire with firewood next to the pit. Once I had some coals going, I scraped them into the pit and took that pork shoulder, which had been rubbed with salt, spices and brown sugar and wrapped in foil, and threw it directly on top of the coals.

Then I covered it with a big piece of sheet metal the wife had been saving (don’t ask for what, I mean, we’re also saving about 300 two-by-four scraps.)

I thought for sure the fire would go out. The trench was wet from the snow and the rain, but the fire actually did well. I checked an hour later and the piece of pig was slowly roasting under there, coals glowing red.

Three hours later the fire was all but out and the piece of pork was perfectly cooked.

I suppose there’s all sorts of cooking theory worked in this method, which I must say I stole from a couple different episodes of Chef’s Table. But I think it works because the initial high heat sears the meat and then as the fire slowly dies, it slowly cooks the pig.

At any rate, it works great and if you see tendrils of smoke rising up from my backyard this Christmas, you’ll know what I’m up to.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.