Whole pigs head on a medium

Yesterday I asked for some advice on how to cook o whole hog head. I decided from what you folks said, and from a few other forums, that it was not necessary to remove the eyes. I decided to anyway. It was much harder than I expected. I used and extremely sharp pointed knife I use for wood carving. It took much hard cutting to loosen the eyes from their sockets, and I used a wire cutter to sever the optic nerve.

I probably worried about all this too much. It turned out to be the best pork I have ever cooked, or even tasted.

The hardest part was fitting it in a MBGE. If I put it in snout up, as the vendor suggested, it just flopped over, and I couldn't close the dome. I found that I could wedge it into one of my larger drip pans, and get the dome closed if it sat on the grill w. 2 fire brick splits on it.

The usual vent setting did not yield a dome of 250. Cooked for several hours at dome 200. Eventually opened the vents to what I would expect to give 350, and had a dome of 270.

14 pound head. At 7 hours, all parts were above 190F.

The aroma of the fat I was spooning out of the pan was intoxicating. Image standing over a vat of frying bacon. It was a serious inducement to feeding frenzy.

A MOST sumptuous meal. My son had a good comment. "This is what steak aspires to be."

Happy Egging, all.