Eastern North Carolina BBQ

ENC BBQ is smoked long and slow for up to 18 hours (130-150 pound pig) at 225-300 degrees. The wood of choice is peach, hickory or easy-to-find local woods. In this region, wood is started in a burn barrel. The wood is stacked on a rack and as the charcoals fall to the ground, they are shoveled out of the burn barrel and into the pit, underneath the meat.

Once the meat has set, don’t forget to baste with the sauce (called mopping) during about the final third of cooking to add flavor and keep the meat from drying out. And when we say mopping, we mean mopping. This handy tool is a lot like a large floor mop.

Next comes the chop. The whole hog is laid out on a giant chopping board, chopped into bite size chunks and mopped again.