I was going to post about the story behind the southern style barbecue pork that is so famous in the south. I mean, if you’re down south, barbecue is always pork. It’s never beef. In fact, you’ll get kicked out of state if you try to order Santa Maria-style brisket, steak, or tri-tip. So as I thought and reflected on this post, I realized that a lot of people don’t even know the story behind why they make the southern-style barbecue pork there.
So I thought I’d start with an introduction about why they even think about pork in the first place. These animals were brought here from England and Bermuda for two reasons:
1) Collect food for the settlers.
2) And sport.
The early settlers loved their sport that they brought with them from England and that was the sport of boar hunting. In some parts of our country we still do this today. Where I’m from, the Paso Robles area of Caif., we have an area around Naciemento Lake and Fort Hunter Liggett where they still do this every year and of course we’ve all heard of the Arkansas Razorbacks. Well, Virginia’s climate was so suitable for raising pigs that they multiplied too quickly. They were so numerous that settlers rounded them up and delivered them to an island in the James River. And this island is what became known as ‘HOG’S Island’.
Now these wild pigs were the main source of food for the early settlers because they were so numerous and easier to catch than wild game or fish. Now, the Indians who were indigenous to the area had been smoking and curing meat, mainly venison, since long before the white man appeared and that is why they were the ones who taught us how to cure pork.
Now, this is just the basic idea of how they came to make southern-style barbecue pork in the south. There were too many pigs and hogs there. And it was much easier to catch them than wild game or fish. So the native Indians taught them how to cure and salt the meat.