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

I stood over a once-forgotten pit that had been in my family for almost a century. It hadnt been warmed by wood coals for at least six decades. We had missed out on so much potential camaraderie, food, and joy while it sat dormant, and I felt honored to resurrect it on a chilly March morning in 2018. The hogs on the pit were whole, and the fuel was nothing but hardwood. The hog cooks who came before me wouldnt have had it any other way, and neither would I.

The men who dug this pit are long gone, but I hope somewhere they were nodding their affirmation, or at least an acknowledgment that I hadnt yet screwed up the family barbecue legacy. The steps I took to cook the hogs that day in March werent any different from the ones they would have taken a century ago. Its further gratification knowing that the hogs in my restaurant today are being cooked with the same fundamental barbecue principles. My granddaddy Pete Jones always said, If its not cooked with WOOD its not BBQ.

What is barbecue? That depends on the cook youre asking, I reckon. Ribs might be on the lips of a Memphian, Californians might say tri-tip, and in Kansas City theyll be arguing about sauce. A Texan will surely tell you that its not a barbecue joint without brisket on the menu, but in my mind, barbecue is whole hog cooked over wood. I say that because I was raised in eastern North Carolina, and thats all weve ever done. East of Interstate 95, thats the expectation. Thats how my family, the Joneses, have been doing it at Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina, since 1947.

Over time, that definition of North Carolina barbecue has been diluted so that any tender pork thats chopped with vinegar is considered barbecue, even when its done without a stick of wood. I think of that as cooked pork, and some of its dang tasty, but its not what I consider to be traditional North Carolina barbecue. In my opinion, cooking over wood is the essence of traditional barbecue, but only a handful of old-school places do it like I think it ought to be done. One of the newest in that mix is my restaurant, Sam Jones BBQ, in Winterville, North Carolina.

In eastern North Carolina, more so than anywhere else in the country, the definition of barbecue has historically been pretty simple: a whole animal cooked over wood, or coals. Long before the days of butcher shops and barbecue joints, this is how barbecue was cooked, be it whole lambs, goats, small steers, or hogs. It was done that way out of expediency when the slaughter was part of the barbecue event, and meat didnt arrive in a refrigerated truck. It just so happens that we still think its the best way. I personally dont believe you can re-create what happens when you cook a whole animal if you start with an individual cut. All the muscles, and fat, and skin combine to create a mixture of dark and light meat, of lean and fatty meat, which cant be matched by a pork butt or a ham. Then, if you make the mistake of cooking without wood, theres nothing you can do to make up the ground you lost in flavor, no matter how much sauce you add.

Im a product of that barbecue, having eaten it all my life. Im also a product of my community and my state. Theres always a Yeti cooler full of Cheerwine, the beloved cherry-flavored soda and North Carolinas finest elixir, in the back of my Super Duty pickup. My truck is equipped with the lights and sirens required for it to double as an emergency vehicle because I happen to be the fire chief in Ayden as well. The irony of my two callings being building fires and putting them out isnt lost on me. We average about three hundred calls per year out of two fire stations, which are made up of volunteers. We get a stipend of nine dollars per call. We obviously dont do it for the money.

That also means that my wife, Sarah, needs to worry about two different kinds of fire taking me away from home. Shes the person who holds our family together when Im gone for a week at a barbecue festival in New York, working long hours at the restaurant, or leaving in the middle of the night for a fire call. Funny enough, our first date was over barbecue, but it wasnt from the Jones family.

You see, my family is known for barbecue. Im the third generation of Joneses to own a barbecue joint. Im also the first who hasnt had to farm tobacco. I still support my forefathers efforts with a Marlboro Light habit I need to let go of, but the tobacco barns are fewer and farther between in North Carolina these days. In rural, eastern North Carolina, the current cash crop is pigs. There are more pigs than people in the eastern part of the state. We go through seventy of them every week between Skylight Inn, owned by my dad, Bruce Jones, and Uncle Jeff Jones (whos really my dads cousin and not my uncle, but thats what I grew up calling him), and Sam Jones BBQ, which Michael Letchworth and I opened up the road in 2015. The two restaurants are seven miles door-to-door from one another, and worlds apart in how theyre operated. Theyre still joined by one important commonality, and thats whole hog barbecue cooked over wood.