# Hog Cookers



## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Just come across an old picture of one of my hog cookers. I've had/made 3 hog cookers, one in the 70s, one in the 80s and one in the 90s.

This one was made in 1980:









The last one I (we) built is in Evanston, still being used as far as I know. I'll see if I can find some more pics.


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## pkred (Jul 9, 2009)

cool


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## Yonni (Sep 7, 2007)

sweet!


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## sawsman (Sep 13, 2007)

Great work! How did it cook? Did you ever participate in any tournaments?


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

sawsman said:


> Great work! How did it cook? Did you ever participate in any tournaments?


This smoker was built to run on charcoal, wood, or LP. It worked great. The rear of the trailer bed had an LP 2-burner grill built in. I puposely put the smoker up on the trailer to keep people from continually opening the lid, peeking in and adding to the cooking time. No tournaments for me. The bed was cypress. My buddy and I catered hogs cooked on a spit, weddings mostly. We cut our own hickory wood; made hickory sawdust by "chain-sawing" hickory logs over a garage floor. I sold my interest in the cooker when I moved out to Wyoming.

I came from Henry County Illinois "The Hog Capital of the World". Everyone cooked whole hogs on a spit, especially schools, car dealerships, churches, seed-corn companies, farm implement companies and an untold number of charitable events. A simple hog cooker could be made by taking a 250-gallon oil drum and splitting it in two, and then adding a spit driven by a coal-stoker motor/gearbox. So there were a lot of them around. Most were put on wheels, a little trailer. My first hog cooker was like that. I'll dig up a picture of it and post it. It was uuugly!

The "gang" I hung with had two "bachelor parties" every year, one was always a black bear and the other could be anything; a pig, a wild hog, a horse's leg, half a deer, a goat, or some beef. All us guys would stay up for 24 hours "cooking" and partying and then the next day the women and kids would come to the "feed". We changed from a wood-burner to an LP smoker/cooker and cut the cooking time of a whole hog from 20 hours to about 8 hours. Naturally we used wood pieces and sawdust for the smoke flavor but the gas burner supplied the heat.

Back then the only competition I can remember was "friendly contests" at county and state fairs. But it was a friendlier, less competive, time and place. 

The last hog cooker I made was here in Wyoming. Me and a work mate worked on it after work and on weekends off and on for 6 months or more. It is really cool; has various attachments that slide over the shaft of the spit. We painted it with high-temp silver paint. There's racks for half-chickens, beef steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs. You could turn about 40 T-bone steaks on the spit at one time. There was spit attachments for whole turkeys too. The spit motor/gearbox is off a pivot irrigator. Many of our corporate people would come to our district headquarters, many times with their families, for annual "safety meetings" (snow-skiing and trout fishing mostly) and we would have big cookouts. It was fun, seemed like I always cooked though. The cooker is still here in Evanston, collecting dust in a wharehouse.


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## sawsman (Sep 13, 2007)

Very cool.

We used to dig a pit in my uncles back yard and bury a pig (cook it in the ground). We'd wrap it in banana leaves, stuff it with a bunch of garlic and spices, Puertorican style. We'd drink a few cases of beer waiting for the pig to get done.. It always turned out really good, but it could have just been the beer. :mrgreen:


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## xxxxxxBirdDogger (Mar 7, 2008)

Goob, you never cease to amaze me. That thing is pretty impressive. I have to respect a man who takes eating so seriously. 8)


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## Bears Butt (Sep 12, 2007)

Very nice Goob. The amazing thing about Goob to me is that he is not as big around as he is tall. And with all that fancy cooing he does, he should be!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

You fellas are too kind. Free Teriyaki beef stiks for the both of ya!

Here's my first hog cooker. Me and my old buddy Arnie made it in a weekend. All the materials were either given to us or were stolen. I think the only thing we had to buy to build it was a case a Bud. 










Gawd, no lights, no license, those were the days.

Arnie is gone now. He use to go to Arkansas or Tennessee every year and bring back wild Razorback hogs and I would cure the hams and smoke them. We **** hunted together. A good guy; I miss him.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

sawsman said:


> Very cool.
> 
> We used to dig a pit in my uncles back yard and bury a pig (cook it in the ground). We'd wrap it in banana leaves, stuff it with a bunch of garlic and spices, Puertorican style. We'd drink a few cases of beer waiting for the pig to get done.. It always turned out really good, but it could have just been the beer. :mrgreen:


That is so cool. I never directly done one in a pit, but helped in a small way one time. It is a ton of work but tastes super.


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## ram2h2o (Sep 11, 2007)

Gyoob: you sure you don't have some Cajun blood in your pedigree? You sure are making me hungry thinking about cooking hogs over a pit. Miss the good times back home in South Louisiana!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

ram2h2o said:


> Gyoob: you sure you don't have some Cajun blood in your pedigree? You sure are making me hungry thinking about cooking hogs over a pit. Miss the good times back home in South Louisiana!


Not Cajun, but I spent a good part of my career working in south Louisiana and offshore.

Worked from Beaumont TX to Pascagoula MS, pipelines and fabrication shops. Good people, know how to eat.


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