Xmas Ham- who's making one ?

[seamad]

After having some tasty results with bacon this year I've decided to give a Ham a go this Xmas. After a bit of interwebs reading I'm going with an injection/cover pickle method for the curing ( as it's only 10 days to go ).
Brine solution is 90g/L salt and 70g/L brown sugar which should make for a slightly sweet ham.
The next step was working out how much curing salt #1 to use. It seems the US FDA suggests from 120-200 ppm sodium nitrite . Using this formula I worked out how much nitrite I needed with a 10% injection rate to get 120ppm :
(120/1,000,000) X (1000/ 0.1 ) / .0625 = 19.2g/L. ( I'm using cure #1 which is 6.25% nitrite ) The meat will absorb slightly more over the 7 day soak, but will only be a small amount and well under the 200ppm mark.
I made up 12 litres of brine and put it in a handipail in the fridge to cool down.


Ready to skin the ham and remove surface fat to allow better brine penetration. Injection needle in starsan and bench/chopping mat sprayed with starsan too.


Weighed the skinless ham to work out injection weight, ended up at 8.540 so slightly over 10 %. Injected along bones first then about 50mm grid over the ham.


Ham in a pickle , I put a plate over it to submerge it. Now to leave it for 7 days in the fridge.

 

[Dunkelbrau]

Looks good, I have the Charcuterie book and was thinking I should do a ham, but I won't have time this year.

Definitely going to make time for it next year!

Let is know how it goes

 

[capretta]

awesome, i meant to get some duck breast prosscutio dried out for chrissty but ran out of time! make sure you post some after pics!

 

[doon]

Cheats ham get a piece of pickled pork and smoke for 8 hours

 

[LiquidGold]

Bigger cheats ham get a piece of ham and smoke for 2 hours

 

[slcmorro]

Biggest cheats ham, buy one already made.

 

[4KingAle]

awesome, i meant to get some duck breast prosscutio dried out for chrissty but ran out of time! make sure you post some after pics!

I got one hanging up right now. Should only take 8 days. If not its New Years duck prosciutto.

 

[Weizguy]

Biggest cheats ham, buy one already made.

Reminds me of the no-brew technique thread.
Cheats, all of them.

 

[seamad]

Ham turned out really well, heaps more smokey than a bought ham and well worth the effort.
Cold smoked it first for 5 hours with a mixture of mountain ash and cherry wood in the smoking tube. Set up 2 trays with ice in the smoker to keep temps down. Final temp was 21C in the smoker and ham at 7C.



Also added some almonds for 3 hours to cold smoke and roasted/salted them xmas morning, very tasty.

Hot smoked then with red box until ham got to 61C ( about 5 hours @ 100 ramping up to 135 C), then wrapped in foil and when cooled a bit put in the fridge.




On xmas morning the WFO was at 150C 2 days post pizza night so decided to bake the ham, turkey breast and stuffing in it. When ham reached 72 C removed it and glazed it with a mix of brown sugar,raspberry vinegar,bourbon and mustard powder.

 

[Mr B]

Crikeys, sounds a looks fantastic

Any chance of a wider pic or your WFO? Looks like a good one

 

[seamad]

Crikeys, sounds a looks fantastic

Any chance of a wider pic or your WFO? Looks like a good one

Thanks mate, still a bit of work to do on it. Fired up 4 times for pizzas so far, getting quicker to reach clearing temps and stays hot for 3-4 days. Had pizza last night and cooked bread in it this morning, currently sitting at 240C so I'm pretty happy with the insulation ( and the pizza)




Temporarily rigged up the beer engine on the pizza prep bench for Xmas, have a feeling it may stay there. Once I've removed the workplace safety approved scaffolding ( after rendering) I'll build under the oven,leaving a door for access to the electric gantry ( for firewood).