Whole Hog Cooker Built From Old Diesel Tank

Whole Hog Cooker Built From Old Diesel Tank FARM HOME Food 26-4-24 After looking at commercial whole hog cookers, Bill White decided he could build something better and easier to use. White found a 2,000 gal. tank that had been used to store diesel fuel. "I cut it in half with a Sawz-All and then spent a lot of time cleaning out the inside," he says. Then he hinged the two sides together. "The tank is about 4 ft. in diameter and 12 ft. long. The top half was too heavy to be opened easily by one person, so I cut it in half again. This gave me a two-part cooker." He put a baffle between the two sides so he can use one half as a barbecue and the other as an oven, heated by the fire on the other side. "I had to modify the grill a couple of times in order to get it to heat evenly. Having the fire directly under the pig didn't work," he says. Grease dripping off the pig onto the charcoal caused it to flame up. To get away from that, he made six 2 ft. by 8 in. trays of plate steel with enough of a side on them to hold the wood or charcoal in. He cut slots in the bottoms of the trays to let the ash fall through. Then he welded these to the sides of the tank front and back, so they wouldn't be directly under the pig. At the very bottom of the cooker, he cut three holes to let grease drip out while he's cooking. He puts buckets under the holes to avoid leaving a mess. He added a damper to control airflow and a chimney made of 6-in. steel pipe. Finally, he mounted a spit in it that he built in his shop of pipe and steel rod. White wanted his cooker to be portable so he mounted it on an old car frame. White says the cooker only cost him his labor. "I never buy anything I don't have to," he says. "To make this, I used only what I had around the shop." White cooks hogs for parties and charities. The barbecue will handle up to a 300-lb. hog or 8 turkeys. On the oven side he can bake up to 200 potatoes and have room to heat up 10 gal. of baked beans and warm up rolls as well. "Of course, you have to time everything so it's all done at the same time," he says. He usually uses applewood as fuel for his cooker, rather than charcoal. "It's easy to find in this area," he says. "I light it with a propane weed burner." He tries to keep the temperature inside the cooker at between 250 and 300 degrees. "A 250-lb. hog, takes about 10 hours on a 70 degree day," he says. "I cooked one when it was 15 degrees out and it took forever. I had to put it in my shop and put tarps around it to hold in enough heat to finish cooking," he says. Because the cooker is on a trailer, he can start cooking the hog at home early in the day and then tow it to the party a couple of hours before dinner is to be served. It's narrower than his pickup, so he doesn't need lights on it, and, in Washington, no license is required on the trailer. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bill White, Box 663, Easton, Wash. 98925 (ph 509 656-2960; E-mail: bswhite@eburg.com).

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