When I was a child, my best friend lived next door. His name was Danny Shapiro.
I think about Danny frequently although I have not seen him since we were 13 and I attended his Bar Mitzvah. That was about 34 years ago.
Danny and I did everything together which in retrospect didn't mean much since I moved away when I was seven. We played in the sandbox, played with my family's dog, played "cowboys and Indians" etc. It was a great time.
Danny was also often at my house when lunch time came about, I don't remember this, but my mother tells me that she would ask "What would you like for lunch today Danny?" To which he would invariably reply "Mrs Hart, have you got any ham?" As Danny's family was Jewish, and my mother being a good neighbor would dutifully respond, "I'm sorry Danny, but we don't have any ham today, what else would you like for lunch?"
I don't know where Danny had been exposed to ham, but he must have dearly loved it.
I confess that I don't blame him.
I have been making ham for my family for four or five years now, and had the luck to get a whole hog leg the other day at a really wonderful price! So I decided that now was the time to make some ham.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a particular affinity for all things that come from what I call the "heavenly hog"! Oh, I do love what can be made with this very versatile animal.
Since I have never butchered a hog's leg before, this seemed like a wonderful opportunity for me to learn and teach at the same time.
Let's begin.
For this to turn out well you will need:
A good boning knife
A large container (a sanitized plastic bucket or stock pot) that will hold the brine and the meat.
A baster that has an attachable needle for injecting the brine into the pieces of pork.
A couple of days of patience.
I have a 23 pound leg with which to start.
The first step is to make your brine. Yes this comes before the butchering process of the leg. This way, your soon to be hams will start brining now rather than several hours later once the brine has cooled.
Here is my recipe:
5 Qts Water
3 C Kosher Salt
3 C Granulated Sugar
1 C Brown Sugar
5-10 Peppercorns
Once you have combined all of the ingredients, bring them to a boil, turn off the heat and let them come to room temperature. All of the granules of salt and sugar should have been incorporated into solution at this time. I usually do this the day before so that I don't have to wait for it to cool.
The first task for me today after the brine is made is to remove the skin.
The goal here is to remove the skin while leaving all of the fat on the leg. The fat will be trimmed down later once we can get a better look at the meat we have to make our ham.
I don't plan on making one ham from this leg, but several. Better for the rate that my family will consume them, and for ease in brining and storage.
The next step that I need to take care of is the removal of the leg bones. It is important to remove these from the ham is to make sure that you don't experience "bone rot", the single most expensive mishap that can occur when making ham.
If you leave the bone in, you are opening yourself up to the potential of losing all of your work! This is one of the biggest reasons that ham is expensive. I have been told that the losses due to bone rot are very substantial in the ham trade, maybe 20% of all hams world wide is discarded due to bone rot.
The way I look at it is this: If the experts have trouble with it, I as an amateur am going to do everything I can to avoid it. So the bone goes. And my dog is very happy.
I start on the "inside" of the leg and cut upwards from the bottom following the bone closely. Go as slowly as you are comfortable here, I did as I am not familiar with the leg bones of a hogs leg.
Well, now I am.
Once the leg is de-skinned and de-boned, place it so that the "inside" of the leg is on top and start looking for the natural muscle separations. That is the places where the muscles differentiate themselves from those next to them.
Also at this time I remove any excess fat that I do not want to be included in the final product. When I am done, the leg will look like this:
They present themselves quite clearly, what you are looking for are breaks in the muscle where when pulled slightly apart, the muscle seems to separate easily with a small amount of connective tissue.
The pieces that I am talking about will have varying sizes and shapes, the idea is to get the ham into sizes that are approximately similar. I was not necessarily able to get consistent sizes, but it will not affect my hams.
I ended up with two larger hams, a medium one and two small guys. This will not present much of a problem with the brining, but when I cook them and smoke them, it is important to track them separately.
Once the leg has been broken down, truss the pieces and drop them into the brine. Here is a video showing how to truss a piece of meat. This method will work for most cuts of meat, but not for poultry, that is a different process (more on that another day).
While the soon to be hams are in the brine, inject them with some of the brine into the interior of the meat. This is why a baster with a needle attachment is so helpful. It is important to make sure you do this as evenly as you can as this will affect your final product.
I let the pieces rest in the brine for 5-6 days. I also go back in to re-inject hams with the brine again about three days in. More to cover my bases than for any other reason. This is especially important with the larger pieces.
Now I deviated from my past ham making process.
I poached the hams in their brining liquid on the stove until they have an internal temperature of 140F and then pulled them in order to smoke them. I also have several shapes and sizes of hams working so I checked each of them several times with a good digital thermometer.
A note about thermometers. I feel it is good idea to get a digital thermometer. A good one can be had for about $20 and will last years while giving you accurate readings.
Once they have reached the correct internal temperature, pull them from the brine and let them cool.
The last part is to smoke the hams. This part is really unnecessary if you are happy with the hams after the poaching is complete. I love smoked meats so this is part of the payoff for me.
I ran out of time the day I poached the ham so I individually wrapped them and refrigerated them for smoking the next day.
The next morning I fired up my new smoker and placed the hams (5) on the shelves and cold smoked them with mesquite for about 4-5 hours. I was looking for color and flavor from the smoker since the meat was already cooked.
If you want to skip the smoking process, or don't have a smoker, you can stop after the poaching as these hams are ready to eat. I just really like the flavor of smoked meats, so I smoke all of my hams.
The final product was wonderful! For dinner that night we had homemade ham with a white bean and braised greens soup and my wife's gluten free corn bread.
A perfect homemade meal.
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