Hog roasting, or spit roast cooking (as the actual technique is called), has been a popular cooking practices for many centuries. It is still largely used today and, not just when it comes to hog roast in Coventry event hire. Take a look on your local high street. You see those roast chickens spinning on the supermarket deli rotisserie? Notice the donner meat turning in that greasy takeaway? They both use the spit roast method of cooking, officially defined as: a style of roasting where the meat is cooked whilst skewered on a spit. If you think about it, even your homemade BBQ kebabs use this form of cooking.
The consumption of a hog dates as far back as 13,000BC. This is when it is thought that pigs were domesticated, a subspecies of the wild boar (which would have been eaten before). But it was when wild boar spread from Western Europe in the Middle Ages that cooking on a spit became really common place. They would mount a pig on a spit pole, held in place using a large timber framework, placed above a hand dug fire pit. This method of roasting was extremely slow. It could take anywhere up to 14 hours to get the roast pork results we are used to in just a few hours. The pig had to be turned frequently by hand too, quite an effort if you think that the average whole hog weighs between 80 to 120lbs – thats 5.7 to 8.5 stone!
Hog roasting was especially common in the Edwardian and Victorian times too, as a way of feeding large groups of people, for example, at street gatherings or community parties. Again, the roasting of a whole pig then was very time consuming. Its safe to say that modern hog roast machines have really sped up the whole process.
Today, roasting a whole pig is a popular feast across the world. Hog roasts are also referred to as:
? spit roasts
? rotisseries
? smoke jacks (USA)
? lechonasado (in Puerto Rico)
? babiguling (in Bali)
? pig pickin (in the deep south of the USA)
