Smoking a hog's head

[JeffroTull]

Hey everybody,
Trying to up my game a little, and have the head from a ~325 lb hog. It's split and skin/ears/snout is off (otherwise I'd be making headcheese).

Looking for any and all suggestions--smoking time, wood, marinade/brine recipes, etc.

And...go!

Thanks in advance.

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[JeffroTull]

So, decided to experiment.  48 h in simple brine (salt, brown sugar, peppercorns).  Had sliced side pork and made a weave right on the head--double layer (to recreate the skin my butcher removed). 2.5-3oz of hickory chips, 6 hours at 225, and came out very nice.  Smoke didn't really penetrate deeply into the head meat, so very subtle smoke flavor.  In the future, I'll probably not double layer the weave.

[SconnieQ]

Sounds like you had a good plan. Blazing your own trail here with the hog head. Sounds like a really tasty experiment to me. The best meat is on the head. You probably did not get much smoke flavor because you used chips rather than chunks. They probably burned up pretty quickly, giving you a quick blast of smoke, then not much. With a large mass of meat like that, chunks would have given you a longer more penetrating smoke.  I'm trying to picture the group of people gorging on that head! Sounds like fun!

[JeffroTull]

Sounds like you had a good plan. Blazing your own trail here with the hog head. Sounds like a really tasty experiment to me. The best meat is on the head. You probably did not get much smoke flavor because you used chips rather than chunks. They probably burned up pretty quickly, giving you a quick blast of smoke, then not much. With a large mass of meat like that, chunks would have given you a longer more penetrating smoke.  I'm trying to picture the group of people gorging on that head! Sounds like fun!

Thanks!!!  I agree, chunks would definitely have been the way to go, used them up smoking a Fatty the day before.  Should've kept the chunks for the head and used the chips on the Fatty.  Hindsight is 20/20.  Also, when I get my hog from the fair this year I am going to plead with my butcher to leave the skin and ears on!

[Pork Belly]

High heat max it out to 250 and large chunks of wood are the way to go. There are multiple layers of fat in the head so you really didn't need the side meat. Here is my post on some pig heads http://smokinitforums.com/index.php?topic=1837.msg10870#msg10870

Try taking unsmoked side meat slices, season them with salt and pepper then lightly dust them with flour. Cook the slices in a medium heat dry skillet, they will maker their own grease and crisp up nicely.