Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue with Recipes from Skylight Inn and Sam Jones BBQ

Jones, pitmaster at his family’s Skylight Inn BBQ restaurant in North Carolina, teams with Vaughn, the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, in this impressive guide to Carolina barbecuing. Jones recounts the 70-year history of his family business, and shares his thorough knowledge of barbecuing, beginning with how to choose a hog (“ ‘bacon hog’ breeds have more muscle and less fat and are ideal for whole hog cooking”). For Jones, “barbecue is whole hog cooked over wood,” and he expounds on that simple concept across the book’s four chapters. He provides instructions on throwing a pig roast, covering best practices on choosing wood (for him, a half cord from the local hardware store) and building the burn barrel, and supplies schematics for constructing a pit out of steel rebar and 80 concrete blocks. From there, he offers a couple dozen recipes for pork (with both vinegar- and tomato-based sauces), as well as chicken and seafood dishes; he also includes crowd-pleasing sides such as a 30-person serving of hog head collards, and barbecue baked beans with ground beef and bell pepper. The book concludes with some secret family non-barbecue recipes such as shrimp stew with scallops and biscuit pudding with chocolate gravy. This is the perfect volume for those on their way to becoming hardcore pitmasters. (May)