Dry cured ham

My first attempt at making a dry cured ham or country ham

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• country
• ham
• dry
• curing

[GunClingingPalin]

You can make a cut along the length of the bone, right to the bone and pour salt down in the slit right on the bone; that will cure it near the bone and won't have bone area spoilage.

[tdjtx]

@GunClingingPalin That's a good idea, thanks.

[RexelB]

Id reckon this didn't go well since i didn't see the final product anywhere on your channel?

[tdjtx]

@RexelB It didn't, I guess Texas isn't a good place to cure hams, at least not out in the garage. It just gets too hot here really fast.

[guntruckhammer]

For the last few months I have been scouring everywhere for as much info as i can get about curing meat. I have done canadian bacon, summer sausage and snack sticks. I even read some of the Foxfire books. I was amazed at the different methods they used for curing.

[tdjtx]

@guntruckhammer Pick up the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn. It is one of the best and the thing I like the most about it is that the recipes for for small cures that you can do at home. I've made some awesome slab bacon from it.

[Buzzmanfly01]

mistakees..needs to be rack, not wrapped, and you inject brine around bone

[faufolet]

@tdjtx . Aitch bone sounds like H-bone. You really should pull that out, it kept a lot of moisture in. After you pull out the Aitch bone you really need to pack a lot of salt where the aitch bone met the ball joint. Also, prosciutto is usually cut the way you describe at the beginning exposing a large surface area on the meat.

Break the ham down into it's 3 primary muscle groups and make hams out of those. It is a lot quicker.

[jtp543]

Larding the outside of it is where I believe you went wrong. Fat will trap water inside the ham and cause the perfect environment for bacteria. Curing is all about getting the water out. Going to subscribe to your channel now because if this was your first attempt i can't wait to see the future!!!

[jtp543]

The price you paid for the ham had me worried from the get go, you need to get your meat for curing from a good processor, not the supermarket. When you buy from a butcher/processor you know, you can make sure everything is very fresh and bacteria growth is at a minimum. If you buy a half you can know that it was fresh and you will have all the pork you will need for many other endeavors. IE sausage, pork chops, ribs, scrapple etc. You will even have the fat to render your own lard.

[jtp543]

Thanks, I thought the video was very good and kudos to you for trying to dry cure a ham. Saw a comment about that is nitrites will take a lot longer to kill you than botulism, the very thing they prevent. Just don't overcook it and it won't form Nitrosamines. My question is why, if you are going to try dry curing a ham(very difficult in the scale of things) would you not just buy a half of a hog? They are really easy to learn to butcher with just a boning knife a hacksaw.

[nimajune27]

Very nice video and all the step by step details you showed. Im going wild pig hunting next week and i wanted to cure the hind legs