Curing Ham

[Preserver]

anyone has a recipe to cure a ham like Honey Baked Ham and not dry curing like a proscuitto.... any good recipe out there??... thanks and have a happy holiday....

[dougal]

Right...

Have you seen the thread here discussing Ruhlman's excellent tutorial book "Charcuterie" ?

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=79195

His "American-style brown-sugar-glazed holiday ham" is, I suspect, pretty close to what you are after. It is brined, hot smoked and glazed. And deals with a 12lb+ (5.5kg+) ham

There's another standard reference I'd steer you towards - Jane Grigson's "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery" - but do note that by today's standards she is *very* heavy on the saltpetre (nitrate). Nevertheless, as a discussion of the slight variations in technique to produce different hams, it makes wonderful background reading.

As to a "start here, do this" handholding guide, I wrote something of the sort myself, a while back.

At least covering the curing.

And others did reproduce it successfully, and (importantly) enjoyed it.

Starting small, I used a 750g (under 2lb) boneless leg (roasting) joint.

I used Saltpetre (Nitrate) back then.

Nowadays, I'd suggest using Nitrite (in the form of Cure No 1 ie "Pink Salt").

No need to rely on friendly bacteria. Slightly less measurement precision required.

Just substitute 6g of Cure No 1 for the 2g of Saltpetre, and ignore comments on bacteria!

It really is an astonishingly simple process.

Anyway, using grams and ºC, trying to dot every i and cross every t, have a go at wading through this :

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1990

Note that curing recipes *don't* necessarily scale in the way one might expect.

The ratio of brine quantity to meat weight is important to preserve.

To finish it as a glazed ham, you might take it out of the poaching water a few minutes early, remove the skin, cover with your glaze mix and pop it into a medium/hot oven for 20 minutes or so, just long enough to bring the glaze to the point at which it will set on cooling...

And whatever you do, don't throw away the skin (or the poaching stock)!

[Nathan Kurz]

anyone has a recipe to cure a ham like Honey Baked Ham and not dry curing like a proscuitto.... any good recipe out there??... thanks and have a happy holiday....

←

I recently posted my wet curing experience to the thread that dougal linked:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1498945

There's lots of other info in that thread as well, if you have the time to sift through it.

[OliverN]

Personally, I always go with penicillin when curing ham.

[Baron d'Apcher]

Jambon Sec.

Berkshire hams. Salt cured. Aitch bone removed.

Rubbed with lard and spices.

ETA winter/spring 2014.