Wild Hog Barbecue at Rufus Ribs

By John Linn Mon., Aug. 10 2009 at 9:18 AM

Categories: Clean Plate Charlie Eats South Florida

John Linn

A meaty scrap of hog ribs coated in Rufus' sauce.

A friend of mine lives a block away from Rufus Ribs, a roadside barbecue trailer with an outdoor smoker in Boynton Beach. He's there pretty much every week, gobbling down styrofoam containers full of meaty spare ribs and pulled pork. But for the past week, he's been telling me about owner Rufus Allen's latest "catch": a wild hog straight from the woods of Kissimmee.

See, Allen is no stranger to smoking wild game. The promise of wild hog and venison marks his menu, but I've never seen him have it in stock. When I heard the rib hut was going to have the hog smoked by Saturday, I knew I had to design my weekend around it.

John Linn

That's a full container.

I trekked down to the metal trailer on Saturday evening and ordered a dinner portion of smoked hog loin with collard greens and mac and cheese. I wasn't sure what the piece would look like, so I was shocked when I saw the size of the hunk Allen's wife had slipped into my to-go box. Screw hog: This looked like mastodon. The piece was more than six inches long and as wide around as a fire extinguisher. A long bone poked out of one end, making a great handle for picking up the whole piece. I felt like a caveman chomping into it.

John Linn

The hog doesn't look any less savage once plated.

I'd never had wild hog before. The meat is dark and lean, and it tastes of very clean, powerful pork. Though there was pretty much no fat on the piece I had, it had a real lip-smacking quality -- the low, slow smoking process liquefied all the connective tissue in the meat, rendering it into tasty gelatin. The flesh practically glistened. We paired the savory hog with a couple of pints of my friend's homebrewed honey IPA, a bitter, hoppy beer infused with a few pounds of honey. It cut right through the strong meat like a Ginsu.

John Linn

Succulent bits tore off by hand easily.

I chomped and poked at the odd-sized piece, gnawing on bones until I'd stripped them of every last bit of hoggy goodness. I'd be ashamed to show how clean I got those bones if the damned thing weren't so tasty. Actually, I'm sort of proud.