Carolina BarbecueThe pig
Every argument here comes down to how much of the hog goes on the fire. Here's the hog, and here's what each style takes off it.
The hog, divided
Side view, facing left. A pit that cooks the whole hog uses all of this at once; a pit that cooks shoulders uses one block of it.
| jowl | the head, the cheeks and the snout — whole-hog country only |
|---|---|
| shoulder | the Boston butt on top and the picnic below: the Lexington cut |
| loin and ribs | the long muscle along the back, and the ribs under it |
| belly | the side, which is bacon anywhere else |
| ham | the back leg, which Midlands pits cook by itself |
The cuts, in their own words
The entire dressed pig — dressed meaning gutted and scraped of hair, the head sometimes left on — split open along the backbone, laid flat over coals and cooked as one pi
The front leg and shoulder of the pig, sold as one primal — a primal being one of the large first divisions of a carcass — or split in two: the butt, the upper half with
The dark crust from the outside of a pork shoulder — the bark, where ten hours of smoke and dip have cooked into the surface — ordered by name at Lexington pits.
The pig's hide, cooked until it blisters and cracks. On an eastern whole hog the skin faces up through the night and is turned to the coals at the end to crisp; at Skylig
A thick stew, or gravy, of pork cooked down with onions until it can be eaten with a spoon, ladled over white rice beside the barbecue.
The drawing is this project's own, and it is a diagram rather than a butcher's chart: the lines are where the styles differ, not where a knife goes. For the actual seams, a pork cutting chart from a state extension service is the thing to read.