How To Cook A TRADITIONAL Whole Hog The Scott’s Way
(guitar music) – [Bill West Voiceover]
Traditional whole hog cooking. It is a simple but rare thing. South Carolina’s Rodney
Scott, has mastered how to cook a traditional whole hog. Keep listening: later in this
video he will reveal the key. – [West] Where does it go from here? – [Scott] Right here, we’ll take it, we’ll add a little bit
more seasoning to this, and we’ll take this, pull it, put it in pans, portion it up, serve it. – [West Voiceover] How to
cook a traditional whole hog Scott’s barbecue way. Hey there, it is Bill West
with barbecuetricks.com. I made a little short journey
to Hemingway, South Carolina. Had a chance to talk to Rodney Scott for a chapter of my book,
“The Barbecue Blueprint” and I tried to learn exactly how to cook a traditional whole hog
the Scott’s Barbecue way. Although Scott is the opposite of flashy, still I was amazed at the
Willy Wonka’s spaceship-style factory that he has
created to smoke his hogs. Although he wasn’t revealing
actual secret ingredients the day I met him, he
was surprisingly open about all his methods and his operation.
– I grew up in the business. My dad started in 1972 and… growing up working with my dad cutting wood, farming, that kind of thing and I saw that cooking the hogs was a little bit easier than farming. I started to pay close attention and here we are. Back on it. I mean, it’s like, once I found out that food
was in supply and demand, I said, “Wow, we could
introduce this to anybody.” – [West] And your favorite
part about this whole thing? – My favorite part about it is
meeting new people every week making new friends through food, and satisfying the appetite of the visitor. – [West] What’s in this mop? Is it…
– Mop sauce is black
pepper, red pepper, vinegar, and a whole lotta love. – [West] I see some lemons. – Lemons. The little citrus flavor in there. – [West] How much of that
do you go through a day? – The mop sauce, we go
through, wow, about… eight to ten gallons a day. With extra sauces and mopping the hogs, about eight, or ten gallons of sauce a day. – [West] Is that sauce or is that mop… – Some people call it mop
sauce, we call it mops… sauce. This is what we will call sauce.
Here at Scott’s Barbecue, this is the sauce. – [West] This is the same thing
you’re getting at the table? – [Scott] Same thing you’re
getting at the table. The same extra sauce that you
would get, that’s what this is. Some people call it mop sauce,
and some people call it mop, according to where you’re from, I guess. – [West] Give me your descriptions
of the different sauces. Different sauce categories. – Wow. Different sauce categories
I’ve heard of have been vinegar base, pepper, tomato, I’ve heard of molasses, and… of course mustard. The main thing that we’ve
only known in this area is vinegar and pepper based. – [West] Is that some type of… Is that called Eastern Carolina? – Eastern Carolina. From Columbia, which is Midlands west, everybody’s considered to use
mostly mustard-based sauces. – [West] And obviously,
you like this the best? – I like the vinegar the best. – [West] I notice it’s
a little sweet, right? – Just a little bit.
Just a little bit. Enough to know that there’s
a little sweetness there but not too much to where
you have to visit your local dentist when you’re done. – [West] So you’re
breaking things up a little bit. – I like to break it up to make sure all the whole hog is covered with sauce, and all the sauce and the juices get through. So while you’re baking the skins, all the flavor’s still trapped right in and everything is getting seasoned. So when you pull it, you
have everything you need. – [West] What’s your typical day, for you running Scott’s Barbecue? On- Typical day, I wake up, get dressed, go get some breakfast, come to work, and I’ll flip my hogs over
because they’re roasted all night I have a couple of guys here all night.
And I start seasoning the
first two hogs to come off around opening time, 9:30 and then I’ll have some
more coming off around noon the last batch will
probably come off around three so that we’ll have whole hogs hot all day so we stage them out to make sure the meat stays hot and moist all day long. – [West] Where does it go from here? – [Scott] Right here we’ll take it, we’ll add a little bit
more seasoning to this, and we’ll take this, pull it, put it in pans, portion it up, serve it. – [West] And you’re
pulling it all by hand? – All’s pulled by hand. That’s probably like I can
get it, keep it tender, moist, and juicy so you can
just grab it with no problem. – [West] Yeah, now,
you’ve done this forever.
What are you looking for at the very end? Is there something with the
texture, or is it the skin? – [Scott] There’s a little texture on top of the meat we watch for. As far as seasonings, we want like this part right here, we want that to have
seasonings on it, sauce. We want it to be covered,
and flavored, so it’ll look like such. On the bottom, the skins, they crisp up and once we get those nice and crispy, we break that off and
we’ll sell that as well. – [West] So if someone says, hey, they want ribs, they’re getting ribs. – They’re getting ribs. Right outta the whole animal,
everything’s right in there. – [West] What’s going on in
the middle of the night here? – Middle of the night, a lot
of storytelling. (laughs) – [West] But the hogs are cooking? – The hogs are cooking, slowly. – [West] When do they go on? – They go in the evening time,
early evening around five.
Four or five o’clock. We get a delivery, we put them on, and we start slow-roasting them from then on until the next day. – [West] So then the fire
has to be built before that. So I guess this process never stops. – Never stops. We light
the fire on Tuesday nights for Wednesday service, and the fire burns from Tuesday until Saturday night. – [West Voiceover] Look
at that burn barrel. The wood is something
that keeps the operation at Scott’s Barbecue fueled,
but there is one big thing that fuels Rodney Scott’s spirits.
– [West] What keeps you going every day? – Music. Music, motivation. That new person that
shows up and wants to taste what we got and see how they like it. Hopefully, satisfy them. – [West] What’s on your playlist? – Man, my playlist is
everything from Chitlin’ Circuit to R&B… to the country… a little jazz. Most of the time I’m playing a lot of R&B, old school hip hop,
you know, upbeat music. – [West] Favorites, favorite tracks? – Aw man, favorite tracks. “Best of Me” by Anthony
Hamilton is one of my favorites. “Don’t Make Me Beg” by Tucker. “OPP,” Naughty by Nature. It goes, it goes all over. – [West] In general, what do you… what’s the key to making this incredible? – The key to making barbecue incredible, in my opinion, is love. You put a lot of love into
it, a lot of time and effort, and you’re pretty much sure
to get the same response back. It’s not easy. But that’s the main ingredient
as far as I’m concerned, is the hard work, the effort,
the love for the whole thing.
– [West] Hemingway, South
Carolina, the epicenter of the barbecue world,
and now Scott has taken his operation a little
further to the coast to open a new place on
Charleston’s historic King Street. The addition of live music, too, it’s sure to fuel another tradition of whole hog barbecue success. You can find out more about Rodney, we did an extended podcast
interview with him. Also there at the website, the free sauces and
sides book that we have. And finally, a full chapter
dedicated more to that interview is in the book, “The Barbecue
Blueprint” on Amazon. Or just check it all out at www.barbecuetricks.com. (guitar music).
