This year we celebrated the holidays with a proper holiday ham. The fresh pork leg came from a locally raised, pastured pig and was cured and smoked by yours truly. While there are lots of decent hams on the market, the satisfaction I get from curing my own ham with my own unique flavors makes processing my own pork well worth the effort. For this ham, I blended the flavors of a dry cured blackstrap molasses country ham with a wet brined American-style brown sugar ham. The combination gives the ham depth and pizzaz, without the long curing time of a dry-cured ham. If you want to cure a ham for a special occasion, this is the ham for you.
Curing a ham is much easier than you might imagine. The process takes about a week and each individual step is fairly simple. Basically you brine the ham in a salty sweet liquid in the fridge for a week or so. The ham is then rinsed, dried in the fridge overnight, and hot smoked until fully cooked. Sodium nitrite is the only special ingredient you will need. A local butcher can order you a 12-15 lb fresh pork leg or shoulder (also called a Boston Butt). Try to get farm-raised pork if you can, because the flavor will be much better. My butcher removed the skin and hacked off the ham hocks for me, then I totally deboned it, just to make carving easier. If you don’t have a smoker you can slow cook it on the bbq or even roast it the oven. It won’t be as smoky, but it will still taste great. I cured and smoked this ham last November, then put it in the deep freeze until I was ready to use it for the holidays.
By Tammy Kimbler, adapted from recipe by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn
Ingredients:
1 gallon water
1.5 cups kosher salt
1 cup blackstrap molasses
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1.5 ounces pink salt (sodium nitrite)
1 tbs fresh ginger
1 tbs juniper berries
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbs coriander seeds
1 tbs whole black peppercorns
1 12-15lb fresh ham (skin and aitch bone removed)
Instructions:
Sodium nitrite can be ordered online from Butcher and Packer for $3.50 a pound, which will last for years used a tsp at a time.
Bring the water to a boil and add the salt, molasses, brown sugar and pink salt, stirring until dissolved. Toast the coriander and peppercorn seeds in a dry skillet, then lightly crush along with the juniper berries. Add the seeds and finely chopped ginger to the brine. Let cool.
Pour the brine into a food-grade plastic container that will fit in your fridge. Add the leg or shoulder, along with the hocks to the bucket. Refrigerate for 1 day for every 2 lbs of meat, removing the hocks after only 2 days. (I admit that I cheated and used our cold Minneapolis weather as my fridge on the back steps.) After about a week, remove the pork, rinse under cold water, then return to the fridge. At this point you can store the uncooked ham and hocks for another week or two before they need to be smoked.
When you’re ready to smoke the ham, set it (along with the hocks if you have them) on a rack in the fridge over night to dry. This gives the smoke a good surface to cling to. The next day, fire up your smoker. I used elm and birch wood for the fire and apple wood shavings for the smoke. You can use whatever flavor wood you like for your smoke. Hickory or cherry would be great. Smoke the pork at 225 degrees for 4-8 hours. Be sure your internal temp is at least 155 degree. If you have good smoke penetration, you can finish it in the oven.
At this point you can either eat the ham, or put it in the freezer until you’re ready for your next holiday feast. I like to put a brown sugar/butter paste on the top, add a cup or two of apple cider to the pan along with a chopped onion and bake until the sugar is crusty and the internal temp is back up to 160 degrees. Delicious!
