If you want to earn the full assortment of pitmaster merit badges, you have to meet a few benchmarks. Mastering the art of a traditional low-and-slow Texas brisket is a must. Tackling the massive ...

The world’s oldest barbecue tradition is cooking meat in underground pits. It’s a method so old, that our ancestors cooked mammoths in underground pits some 29,000 years ago. In modern day Texas, meat ...

In today's Oregonian, I've contributed a FoodDay story about my adventures cooking a whole pig in my Caja China, a Cuban roasting box that can do 70 pounds of meat in less than four hours. Exciting, ...

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in ...

Monica Burton is the former deputy editor of Eater.com where she covered restaurants and food culture from 2017 to 2025. It can take up to 24 hours to cook a whole hog. For Rodney Scott, pitmaster at ...