the pitdirect heat

The Carolina way of putting fire to meat: a bed of hardwood coals directly beneath the hog or the shoulders, with no flame and no separate firebox. The coals are made elsewhere — in a burn barrel or a fireplace — and shoveled in, so the meat sits over glowing charcoal and its own dripping fat rather than in a stream of smoke. The contrast is the offset smoker of Central Texas: a cylinder with a smaller firebox attached at one end, whose burning post-oak fire sends heat and smoke sideways through the chamber past the meat — indirect heat. The whole-hog article, the Mallard Creek church and the Barbecue Center all describe the coals going under the meat.

The word carries the method. The Wikipedia article on barbecue draws its line between the indirect barbecues of the United States — meat roasted or smoked over wood or charcoal at low temperature for hours — and the direct grilling of most of the world, done over hot coals for minutes; in a typical American home barbecue the coals are dispersed to the sides. The Carolina pit sits across that line: the coals are directly under the meat, as on a grill, but far enough below and slow enough that the cook is barbecuing, not grilling. True 'Cue quotes a federal meat-labeling rule that defines barbecued meat as 'cooked by the direct action of dry heat resulting from the burning of hard wood'. Texas divides the same way: Central Texas cooks with indirect heat from a pecan, post-oak or mesquite fire, and West Texas over direct mesquite heat 'in a method very similar to grilling'. Inference — in geometry the Carolina pit is closer to the West Texas cowboy fire than to the Austin smoker, and the reason both Carolina styles burn their wood to coals first is that flame under a fat hog is a fire. Ed Mitchell in Wilson cooks 'hot and fast' with a bank of coals surrounding the hog, starting at 500 degrees and letting it fall to 250; Rodney Scott shovels coals under a hog lying belly-down for eight to twelve hours; the Barbecue Center in Lexington 'fires the pits' by distributing coals evenly beneath the shoulders.

Coals go in under the meat in a thin, even bed and are renewed from the burn barrel through the cook; the meat is never over flame. Tradition holds — the bed goes heavier under the hams and shoulders of a whole hog and thinner under the loin. Fat drips onto the coals and vaporizes — Inference — the source of much of what the Carolinas call wood flavor — and a flare-up from that fat is the whole-hog cook's constant danger. The pit is closed with a lid or a door to hold the heat, and a hog is flipped once near the end.

Every pit on the North Carolina Historic Barbecue Trail and every True 'Cue certificate cooks this way by definition — on grates over pits with wood or charcoal. Tradition holds — the offset smoker has arrived too: Lewis Barbecue in Charleston cooks Central Texas brisket in offset smokers, and is described here the same way as a wood pit.