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Top StoriesDeep Pit Barbeque -- Minnesota StyleHumans have cooked meat in a lot of ways. One of the oldest is to build a fire in a hole, wrap the meat up in something, then bury it. The Hawaiians do it at the luau, cooking a pig or fish in a long pit, using stones to prolong the heat. In Mexico, they call it a barbacoa, the source word for our barbeque. The meat they traditionally use is a whole cow's head. Well, in Minnesota, a cow's head cooked in a hole in the ground might not sit well with a guy's Scandinavian relatives, so some modification is needed. When my wife informed me that all her cousins of several generations were coming to our house for the annual cousins' gathering, I suggested a pit barbeque. I do it West Texas style, the way my father, who is not from any part of Texas, does it. He has a permanent bricked-in pit at his citrus farm, and uses it reasonably often. My wife, who has partaken of one of my parents' pit barbeques, thought it was a great idea. She especially wanted to see the faces of her relatives, mostly of Norwegian heritage, when they found out I was cooking the meal in a hole in the ground. We decided to surprise them by not telling them until they were here. Now, I didn't want to build a brick pit like my father's, so I came up with my own way of doing this unusual style of cooking. The photos and descriptions below should let you duplicate the process, if you're so inclined.
Rather than a bricked up pit, my method was to bury a 55-gallon drum in the ground. I cut the top off, leaving a rim of metal below it, which I cut into tabs. Bending the tabs out lets you put the lid back on...an essential part of the process. Note: the drum must be absolutely clean. No oil, pesticides, or other residues. Craig's List is a good resource for finding a drum, as are scrap metal yards. Smell the drum. If you smell anything, or there is anything visible in the drum, keep looking. Digging this hole is a lot of work, so give yourself plenty of time. Start with about a 4-foot diameter hole, since it will taper as you dig deeper. The drum is 24" across and 36" long. Leave about three inches of it exposed at the top, so the lid will fit. Attach a heavy screw eye to the top, to make it easy to pull off with a hook.
After you backfill around the buried drum, making sure to pack the dirt tightly around it, you'll need some other supplies. Kindling, and about seven or eight bags of firewood...the kind they sell outside the local supermarkets. If you have another source, you want good hardwood firewood, since your goal is to have about 12-18" of hot coals in the bottom of the barrel before cooking begins. You also need a tarp or tarps, large enough to cover a 4' X 4' area.
To add additional heat retention, line the bottom of the drum with granite or other non-porous river rocks, about half the size of your head. They'll hold an amazing amount of heat and help your cooking to be successful.
You start this barbeque process about 18 hours before you plan to serve the food. Begin by building a nice fire in the pit, stacking newspaper, kindling, then firewood. You can layer the firewood in several layers, alternating directions, before starting the fire. Use a rolled up newspaper, with a little charcoal lighter fluid as a long match to get the newspaper started burning. As the fire burns down, add additional layers of firewood. Figure on three or four hours to burn enough wood to establish the 12-18" deep layer of glowing coals you'll need. Start around 6 PM the night before the serving, and plan to finish up the preparations about 10 PM. Again, the meat has to be in the pit for at least 12 hours, but it can be in the pit for up to 20 hours, and still be perfect. I like to shoot for 16 hours. Preparing the Meat Another chore for the day ahead of the festivities is preparing the meat for the pit. You can cook any kind of meat, but pork, beef, and turkey work out the best. If you're a hunter, venison would also work well. Allow a minimum of 1/2 lb. for each guest, or 1 lb. if you want leftovers. Large pork loin roasts of about 8 lb. are good. For the beef, the best is a large chuck roast, again about 8 lb. A 10 lb. turkey is also a great choice. Best of all, you can use all three at the same time. You're going to need some cotton flour sack toweling or white cotton pillowcases, white cotton terrycloth toweling, and baling wire to get the meat ready, along with a pair of wire cutters. A fabric store can supply your needs, as can a thrift shop. Under no circumstances should you use any cloth that contains any synthetic fibers. Cotton only! Launder the cloth, using regular laundry detergent, then run it through the washer two more times, with no detergent. You want everything rinsed out of the cloth. Get this stuff ready well in advance of the time you need it. Once your fire is going out in the pit, you can come in and do the actual prep. On a clean cutting board, season the meats liberally with salt and pepper. Nothing else is needed. On a separate surface, lay out a sheet of the cotton flour sack material or the table cloth. Place one piece of meat on it, then wrap it up with the cloth, tucking in the corners to make a tidy package. You should have two layers of this light cloth on all surfaces. Then, wet a suitably sized piece of terrycloth toweling, wring it out and wrap the package with that as well. Finish up by wrapping in both directions with the baling wire, ending by creating a loop on the top of the package. You'll use this with your hook to put the meat in the pit and to remove it. Repeat all of this for as many pieces of meat as you will be preparing. Note: the 55 gallon drum can handle two 8 lb. roasts and one 10 lb. turkey. It all has to make up a single layer in the drum. Put the meat in the refrigerator after wrapping, then return to your pit to monitor the fire.
Once you have a deep layer (12-18") of red hot coals, you're almost ready for the cooking. Just for insurance, I always add a 20 lb. bag of charcoal briquettes at the very end of the fire-making. When they're white and hot, it's time to load up the pit. The next layer will be a nice thick pad of green material. I used maple stems and leaves, in a pad about 6" thick. Other common materials include willow branches and leaves and banana leaves. Maple and willow are usually available in Minnesota. If you use something else, make very sure that the plant material you're using is not toxic or strong smelling in any way. The material should be freshly cut, as well...the fresher the better. Before putting the green leafy stuff in the pit, have your packages of meat sitting nearby, along with a hook of some kind (a fishing gaff works fine, or you can make a hook) for placing them in the pit. Once the green stuff goes in, time is short. Notice that my pad of leaves and branches is about the size of the opening of the barrel. Put the stuff on top of the barrel, then tamp it down with a garden rake, as shown in the next photo.
Pack it in tightly against the coals. It will immediately start smoking heavily, which is just the effect you want.
Using your hook (a fishing gaff works nicely) place the packages of meat on top of the smoking greens. Work quickly, but space the meat out evenly.
Once the meat is in the pit, put the lid on the drum. Again, waste no time with this step, or the leaves and branches will dry out and catch fire. You don't want that to happen.
Now, cover the lid with a light tarp already soaked with water. Press it down so that it makes a nice seal against the soil and the drum. The idea here is that you want to seal things up so the fire goes out and the meat cooks through smoking and steaming. Finally, backfill around the drum and on top of it, to a depth of between 10" and 12" Compress the dirt well, making sure everything is sealed up. The tarp will prevent any dirt from entering the barrel. That's it. Now all you have to do is wait. Don't worry. Don't come out and try to see if it's still hot. It is. Really. Leave it alone! Inside the drum, the meat is cooking. First, it gets seared by temperatures exceeding 500 degrees. The fire dies out almost as soon as you put the lid on and cover it with the tarp, since no oxygen can get to the fire. Smoke from the greenery surrounds the meat and permeates the wrapping, gently adding a wonderful smoky flavor. Over the next hours, the temperature slowly decreases. Early in the cooking, the meat actually gets sterilized, and no bacteria can enter the drum. For the last few hours of cooking, the meat cooks in its own juices, much like a pot roast cooking in moist heat. After 16 or so hours, the temperature of the meat will reduce to 150-160 degrees, having come down from being much hotter. The meat is completely tender, juicy, and ready to be served. If you're worried about sanitary issues, just remember that temperatures inside the drum have been way above any possibility of bacterial survival. Since nothing can get into the drum until it is opened, there's no way there will be a problem. I've had successful barbeques of this type where the meat has remained in the sealed pit for up to 20 hours, and it still comes out perfect. I wouldn't open a pit before 12 hours had passed, or the meat will not be as tender.
Finally! Your guests have arrived the next day, and it's time to open the pit. I strongly suggest you get someone other than yourself to do this work. You'll already be tired, and they seem to like doing it. Expect a lot of "What the hecks?" from your company, especially if you haven't told them what's going on.
After most of the dirt is shoveled off, have a couple of people grab the corners of the tarp and peel it back, removing the rest of the dirt and exposing the perfectly clean metal lid. Pull the lid off with the hook in the eye you installed. Go ahead...feel the lid...I told you it would still be hot!
Grab your hook and pull the packages of meat out of the ground. Notice the nice brown color given the outer layer by the smoke. The inner layers will still be white as snow.
Take the packages inside and unwrap them. I like to put the cooked meat in disposable roasting trays. They're handy and don't have to be cleaned up. Enlist the help of a couple of guests to shred the meat. You can use two forks to pull the super tender meat apart. It's more fun, though, to pull on new rubber gloves and pull it apart by hand. It won't be hot enough to burn you, but it'll be hot enough to make you smart a little. This process shouldn't take more than five minutes or so, and you're ready to serve. Have some other helpers put out the beans, salads, breads, and whatever side dishes you prepared earlier or, better yet, got your guests to bring with them. Chili beans are a very popular side dish for these barbeques. Use your own favorite recipe.
Yum! Pork is on the left, turkey in the center, and beef on the right. I like to supply a variety of bbq sauce and fresh salsa, leaving the guests to choose their own condiments. Trust me, this stuff tastes wonderful and is so tender you'll only need a plastic fork for a utensil.
Nobody's going home hungry today! Comments? Email Me! More Recent Stories
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Pit Barbeque -- Minnesota Style -- 9/02/08
Bubba Lives!Remember Bubba, the satirical spoof of Microsoft Bob, written back in the mid 1990's? That was my freeware program. I finally found a copy, and have put it on the server. It actually still runs in Windows XP and Vista. To install it, download the zip file at the link, then extract all the files into a single directory. Right click and drag the bubba.exe file to your desktop and drop it as a shortcut. If you don't remember Microsoft Bob, or Bubba, just ignore this. Runs in all versions of Microsoft Windows, from 3.0 to Vista. Harmless to your PC.
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