Paper Bag Pig in the Ground

Does burying a pig in the ground (Imu-style) sound like a lot of fun but, at the same time, does it sound like too much risk and too much fuss? Here's a way to experience some of that excitement without going whole hog. Burying a pork butt in a paper bag is a fun, low-risk, low-impact way to ease into cooking pork underground. It's a way to experiment and fine-tune your skills without gambling an entire pig. It's hard to mess up, and the digital thermometer gives you the peace of mind that goes with knowing, unequivocally, that it's safe to eat. If it isn't, you can always finish it in the oven.

1. Pork shoulder ("butt") -- any size
2. 2 Large Paper Grocery Bags
3. Stapler
4. Digging tool (e.g. shovel or backhoe)
5. Digital Meat Thermometer, with at least one probe on a wire 2 feet or longer. We used a Thermopro
6. Leaf litter (leaves, grass clippings...)
7. 2 oven racks (or other flat, metal objects)
8. 12' of wire -- approximately 14 gauge or thicker (or cable/chain)
9. Firewood (or scrapwood) -- enough to fill up a 2'x3'x4' hole.

Optional:

• Rub [We used Pork Barrel BBQ Seasoning & Rub, from Costco. It's my go-to rub when for easy pork butt smoking.]
• Bricks (or rocks, about the size of bricks -- pick some that won't explode)
• Post hole digger
• Backhoe
• Thick leather gloves (e.g. welding gloves)

You don't really need a backhoe, but when you have one it seems silly not to use it.

1. Find a safe spot for your fire pit.
2. Make sure that you're not going to hit a buried wire or a pipe. If you have doubts about what's below, call Digsafe.
3. Make sure that your pit is in a location where the fire won't spread. Keep in mind that, when your fire is roaring, embers may float up, away, and then back down.
4. If you're not experienced making outdoor fires, do some additional safety research.
5. Our hole was about 2 feet deep, 4 feet long, and 3 feet wide.
6. Keep the dirt that you want to use to backfill close to the hole.

Research tells me that most people use seasoned firewood (hardwood, specifically) for this. But we used scrap from my shop, instead (no plywood). Most of my scrap is pine or fir. We supplemented that with some split white pine logs from around our property. Next time I'm going to heap on more wood and burn longer (our burn took 2 hours). I would have liked the cooking temperature to be a little hotter.

1. Build up a fire in the bottom of the hole. If you want suggestions regarding how to start a fire, I'm sure you can find them after a quick search. I just used paper to get things going. My scrap was very dry.
2. Once the fire is going, keep feeding it. Fill up the entire hole, but don't smother it. Make sure that it doesn't spread.
3. Let it burn down to glowing coals.

[Next time I do this, I'm going to skip this step, just to see if it's really necessary.]

Once the fire was going, we added bricks in locations where they would be heated up by the fire, without smothering the fire. In my mind, the bricks serve as packages of heat energy that can be easily moved and placed on top of the "pig," so that it is fully surrounded by hot materials. We used bricks because we had some old bricks that we had recently removed from our house. Bricks are an easy size to move around, and they're not going to explode when heated (as some rocks do). It turned out that they weren't as easy to gather and place on top of the pork butt as I had expected.

The next time we do this, I want to experiment with using sand for the same purpose; maybe metal containers full of sand or sand temporarily bonded into brick form. We may leave out the bricks altogether. I'm not convinced that they're necessary.

1. Place about 2 dozen bricks in the fire.
2. Situate the bricks so that they will get as hot as possible, but don't let them smother the fire.

1. Get an oven rack and 4 wires, approximately 3 feet long each. We used 14 gauge wire. Coat hanger wire would work well. Instead of an oven rack, any metal sheet could work -- or some metal fencing or mesh.
2. Make a handle at the end of each wire by doubling the wire over and twisting.
3. Connect the other end of each wire to a corner of an old oven rack. Twist to attach the wires. Instead of an oven rack, most people use something like chicken wire to wrap up the meat. The purpose is to provide a non-combustible framework for lifting out the pig.

Traditionally, banana leaves are used here. I've also read about people buying crates of cabbages. But since the purpose of these leaves is mostly just to provide steamy moisture, I wondered if we could find something cheaper and easier. So we gathered some wet leaves that I dumped in the woods last fall. I think they were mostly red maple, but that doesn't matter. They were cheap, moist, and biodegradable.

1. Gather some leaf litter or other soft, biodegradable plant matter. Lawn clippings would probably work fine.
2. If it's not already soaked, thoroughly wet it.
3. Drain off excess water. The goal (I think) is to provide steam, not to douse the fire.

Normally, buried pigs are wrapped in tarps or burlap, but a paper bag worked fine for us. It held everything together, and it was easy to peel off at the end.

1. Add any seasonings and/or sides that you want to cook with the pig. We used the same rub that I usually use for smoking pork butts.
2. Place the pig in a paper bag and fold down the top of the bag.
3. Place the bagged pig in a second bag. Fold down the top and staple in place.

1. Wet the paper bags, containing the pork butt.
2. Place a thick bed of wet leaf litter on top of the oven rack with handles.
3. Place the wet bag of pork on the leaf litter.
4. Jab a temperature probe (or two) through the bag and into the pork.
5. Cover the pork bag with more wet leaf litter.

Wait until the fire has burned down near the bottom of the hole. For us, there were still a few flames, but mostly there was just a nice, thick bed of coals.

1. Rake back the coals and bricks from the center of the hole, but leave some coals on the bottom.
2. Toss some leaf litter onto the spot where you plan to place the pig.
3. With a helper, use the wire oven rack handles to lift the pig and lower it into place. Make sure that the thermometer probe wires are pointing in a smart direction.
4. Situate the wire handles so that they're sticking out of the hole.
5. Place the second oven rack on top of the pig. The purpose of this rack is to let you know when you've dug far enough, when the time comes to exhume the pig.
6. Place hot bricks and coals on top of the pig. A shovel or post hole diggers can be used for this. I think you also might be able to move the bricks with welding gloves.
7. Rake the coals inward, as much as possible.
8. Backfill the hole. Cover up any signs of smoke leaking out.
9. We probably had a little less than a foot of dirt above the pork butt.

The new guidance on pork is that a roast needs to reach 145 degrees Fahrenheit in order to be safe to eat. But people who know their pulled pork say that a pork butt needs to get up to around 200 degrees to achieve easily-pullable, melt-in-your-mouth consistency. I'm not sure what temperature ours reached. It had climbed to 156 when I went to bed, and it was down to 143 the next morning. I'm guessing it peaked between 160 and 165.

1. At the very least, for safety, wait until the pig reaches 145 degrees.
2. Again, for safety, remove the pork butt before the temperature drops into the "danger zone," around 140 degrees. We waited about 19 hours, and our roast never dropped below 140. We could have stopped it earlier, but we're late risers.
3. Dig down until you hit the top oven rack. Then dig more carefully. Tug on the wire handles occasionally to see if the pig and lower rack are loose enough to lift. It would not be good to break a wire, so don't pull too hard on them.
4. Use the wires to lift out the pig. Brush away the dirt and leaf litter. Peel back the wet paper bag and try a sample taste. You should be able to easily pull some off with your fingers.
5. Use some lifting forks to transfer the butt to a clean cookie sheet.

As I mentioned above, 200 degrees seems to be the agreed-upon target range for easy-to-pull pork butt, and ours probably just broke 160. Our butt was a little hard to pull, but it is very juicy and tender. And there's no discernable burnt leaf litter smell! It turned out fattier than the pulled pork that I'm used to, due, I'm guessing, to the lower cooking temperature. The nice thing about the extra retained fat is that the leftovers are juicier when microwaved. At our house, 90% of pulled-pork eating is done as "leftovers."