All About Ham

[SobaAddict70]

Only lately have I discovered that fresh ham has nothing to do with the pink colored stuff that I usually associate ham with. It also doesn't taste anywhere near like it.

I've had ham studded with cloves, glazed with maple syrup and once, rubbed with a dry rub and Cajun seasonings. (It wasn't very good to be honest.)

There is Smithfield ham, Virginia ham, Boar's Head ham and deli ham. There is maple-cured ham, smoked ham, Black Forest ham and dry cured ham.

What I'm most interested though is stories, dishes and ideas involving ham in Southern cuisine. And perhaps one o' y'all will teach me to finally understand exactly what it is that makes a ham GREAT.

I have a confession to make: I can get bacon, but I've never quite gotten ham.

Soba

[FoodMan]

oh boy....This is like several topics in one. I would love to see the answer(s) though.

mine is simple: Ham is made from pork, and pork is good. Ham hocks with southern greens is fantastic. Ham hocks with beans is even better, smoky lip-smacking fattty goodness. As Emeril would say "Add it (the hock) to a bumper and it would taste good"

This leaves the other 95% of the ham to discuss....

Elie

[fifi]

I can only add my experience. In the 50s we always had a ham in the fridge. The cycle was like this... Mom would buy a whole ham. That would typically be from Hormel. At least this was what I remember from the wrapper. The ham would go into the oven, with brown sugar, cloves and maybe some pineapple. The ham was the center of attention for one meal. Then it went into the fridge to be sliced on for sandwiches or an addition to breakfast. After a month, it was whittled away to a ham bone. Then it was the basis for a big pot of navy beans. This cycle went on month after month. I do remember mom discussing alternate brands of ham but she always went back to that Hormel ham in a black wrapper. I have no idea what difference that made.

[andiesenji]

I grew up eating home cured ham and nothing has ever tasted as good. Occasionally my relatives who still live on the farm send me a ham for the holidays. These are really big hams, nothing like the little ones in the market.

No dye to color the ham pink. It is more a dark red.

I have developed a "recipe" or method for turning a barely edible "loss-leader" supermarket BONE-IN ham into something quite acceptable. However it involves finding some inexpensive maple syrup - I buy the jugs of the stuff at Costco but Trader Joes sometimes has a sale on the "B" syrup which has more flavor.

You need a lot of it because the ham has to be covered at least half way with the liquid.

First you take your ham and trim off as much of the outside fat as possible. Then you take your trusty chef's fork or if you don't have one use an ice pick, and stab the thing all over, stab deep, right down to the bone.

Then rub the ham with dry mustard.

put it into a pot that is not too much larger than the ham but leaves you enough room so that you can lift the ham out easily when you need to turn it over.

Add the maple syrup until it comes up well past half way on the ham, if you have enough, cover it.

put it in a slow oven, keep the temperature around 275, certainly not over 300.

At the end of an hour turn it over and put it back in for another hour.

Repeat until the ham has been in the oven a total of 4 hours.

lift it out of the pot and put it on a wire rack over a sheet pan or in the sink so the excess liquid can drip off. Then transfer to a dry roasting pan, turn the oven up to 350 and put it back in the over 30 minutes to brown.

When the syrup is cool, strain it and store it in the freezer, you can use it for another ham.

You can do this with a spiral sliced ham, one of the cheap ones that are usually way too salty, but you have to have it tied fairly tightly so the slices won't separate during the cooking.

[SobaAddict70]

Can someone explain to me why ham is usually served with or cooked with something sweet?

Soba

[fifi]

I think it has something to do with the sweet/salty pairing that we see in other cuisines. While I don't normally like the intrusion of sweet in otherwise savory foods, I still remember snitching the pieces of pineapple (canned, of course) off of the ham and enjoying the sweet/salty/fatty succulence of those pieces of pineapple.

[Carrot Top]

Good question, Soba. In your original listings of 'hams' let's not forget though all the hams from other countries...I wonder how long that list would be...Italians make an enormous variety..so do the Germans...and even the Chinese.

Having moved to the South as a 'grown-up' (yeah, right ) I find that I don't have the appreciation for 'country hams' that people who are from here do...the flavor is too strong for me, even in general cooking use sometimes.

But I wonder if the Southerner's love of 'ham' is not another evidence of how close many people here still are to their agricultural roots. Country ham is not a nicely-packaged up taste-emptied product. It is real, it is strong, and it is something that lots of people still have in their memories as being made at home, or close to home, by someone they knew...following the rural tradition of living on what was nearby and available.