DES MOINES, Iowa – The smoke from the engine that drives the deals at the World Pork Expo pours out all day long and sometimes through the night, rich with the scents of midwestern and Texan trees.
The deal-making fuel – barbecued pork – sits inside the smokers, often for hours, building flavour and hopefully favour with the clients, suppliers and prospective partners who will be offered the rich meat.
The companies that use the massive pork industry trade show to promote their businesses are serious about being able to offer succulent pork to those who visit their tents that line the main thoroughfare of the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.
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Visitors to the pork expo never have to go hungry for pork.
With the sun beating on his back and a flaming barbecue cooker roasting his front, pork sausage cook Jim Stonehocker couldn’t seem happier. The smoke didn’t bother him and the sweat trickling down his forehead and into his eyes was only an occasional distraction as he flipped and turned two pound links of pork breakfast sausage.
It was a break from his usual office job as executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Odom’s Tennessee Pride, a family-owned pork sausage company in Nashville, Tenn.
“We’re down here pushing our brand,” he said, preparing the sausages that some of his employees would hand out free to passersby at the expo.
“We’re talking to guys who supply our hogs. We have to be here.”
The tents that line the fairground streets carry the names of the companies that supply genetics, pharmaceuticals, feed and advice to hog farmers around the world. In most cases visitors are offered pork prepared exclusively for a specific tent, used as an enticement to keep customers and prospective customers around long enough to develop relationships.
Stan Groth of Marshalltown, Iowa, was responsible for ensuring that visitors to the Novartis tent had a pleasant culinary experience. Early morning on the first day of the expo found him cooking pork kabobs in his Oklahoma Joe smoker.
While the kabobs cook quickly – about 45 minutes – the pork briskets and St. Louis ribs take six hours and the pulled pork butts take nine.
Groth is a professional barbecuer, often working a different event every day during the high school graduation season of May to July, travelling throughout his part of Iowa.
He uses applewood, which grows extensively in his area and imparts “flavour that’s real good.”
He also does “everything in reverse,” barbecuing the meat for a few hours, marinating it and then putting it back on for a while. That way the smoke seeps into the meat, he said.
Professional smoker Gayland Burge of Columbus Junction, Iowa, said producing great tasting smoked pork is a pretty basic process.
“Use hickory, put a dry rub on it and put it in there,” he said.
His main secret: after two hours in the smoker, take it out, wrap it in tinfoil and put it back in.
