It's ham! After curing for the past 34 days our ham is ready. It's salty, smoky, tender and quite delicious. This is quality ham. The pig was raised by neighbors who grew their own feed. It was then butchered locally. Our local grocery has their own brand of sliced ham for $7.69 on sale, more if you want Boar's Head. We paid about $1.23 per pound to do it ourselves, and it was easy. Coat and inject it with the cures, refrigerate for five days, recoat the surface and then refrigerate for 2 days/lb. After refrigeration, scrub the ham to clean it, place it in the smoker for several hours. After it was smoked we soaked it for 6 hours. Then we boiled it in a large cooker for 7 hours. Allow it to drain and it's ready to slice.
The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
5 comments:
That ham is a beauty! I buy organic produce from a Lancaster County farmer in season and he sometimes can get us organically raised beef and chicken from nearby Mennonite farmers. I've never had the treat of eating ham from a pig raised by someone I know. A long time ago, my oldest took riding lessons at a barn that was on the grounds of a farm school for boys. Every spring we'd see a litter of baby pigs, and in fall when we'd smell the smoker in operation, we knew their fate. It's a good thing to know where your food comes from and in some cases, to know your food literally, as in your neighbor's pig.
Very nice. I sure would like a nice ham sandwich, on rye, please. I can bake the rye bread for you if you would share some of that ham!
Absolutely. We're slicing it down now, some for sandwiches, some for ham/beans, some for ham salad. We'll freeze it in small packages.
Oh, Kathy! It's gorgeous! Wish I could sample it. Congratulations!
Thank you, Wendy!
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