Everything but the oink

I had the honor and pleasure to sit down and talk with celebrity whole-hog pitmaster Ed Mitchell for a writing project.

I was a little starstruck at first, but Ed Mitchell is one of the finest, most genuine human beings you could ever hope to meet. I asked him to explain to me, from his perspective, why North Carolinians are so passionate about barbecue.

"It's our culture," he explained. "When I was a boy, North Carolina had two things driving our economy. The legal one was tobacco, and the illegal one was moonshine."

I asked him about the legend of cooking his first hog at age 14.

"Let me tell you something," he said. "It doesn't really take all night to cook a hog. Back then, men didn't drink or cuss around women, so staying up all night with the hog was an excuse to drink moonshine all night."

He told me the story: He was too young to drink, but was allowed to go out with his father, uncles, cousins and grandfathers to "watch the pig" one night. Apparently, the grownups passed the jar of moonshine around a few times too many and fell asleep. Ed stayed up and made sure the fire didn't get too high.

After a few hours, the grownups started waking up and panicking about having done burned the pig. When they checked it, it was perfectly cooked.

"My daddy asked me if I had done it," Mr. Mitchell told me. "Then he looked at the pig, looked at me, and passed me the jar."

Swoon.