Meats and Sausages
American Country Ham
Only the hind legs of hogs can be called a country ham. They may not be injected with curing solutions nor placed in curing solution.
| Meats | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| ham, bone-in | 8 kg | 17.6 lb. |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
| salt | 54 g | 3 Tbsp. |
| Cure #2 | 10.0 g | 2 tsp. |
| sugar | 20.0 g | 4 tsp. |
| pepper | 6.0 g | 3 tsp. |
Instructions
- Mix salt, Cure #2 and sugar together. Divide into three equal parts. Rub ham on all sides with ⅓ of the mixture. Place ham in refrigerator. Keep it covered with plastic wrap or a cloth to prevent drying. A good idea is to keep it in a zip- loc bag. This prevents the ham from drying. The ham should be kept at around 90% humidity, but the humidity in a refrigerator is only about 40%.
- After 3 days, rub the ham with another ⅓ mixture and place in a refrigerator.
- After 10 days remove the ham from the refrigerator and apply the last ⅓ of the mixture. Place ham back in refrigerator.
- After 40 days (total salting time) remove the ham from the refrigerator and briefly rinse with tap water. Brush off any salt from the surface.
- Coat the surface of the ham with pepper and stuff the ham into the netting.
- Keep for 14 days at 40-42° F (4-6° C), 75% humidity.
- Apply cold smoke (77° F, 25° C) for 24 hours.
- Ripe (dry and mature) hams for 60 days at 77-86° F, 25-30° C), 65% humidity.
Notes
The ingredients are listed for 1 kg of meat. If the ham weighs 8 kg, multiply the weight by 8. For example it will need 54 x 8 = 432 g of salt.
Total processing time: 115 days.
Time can vary from 3-5 months. The actual time will depend on the size of the ham and processing temperatures.
