I like ham.
Born from necessity it has become artistry. A culinary tapestry enjoyed thinly sliced or on biscuits.
I decided a few months ago that I wanted to give home curing a try. I did a couple attempts with mixed results. This is my first attempt with some really serious equipment.
First, I suppose, I should make a confession. I’m not actually curing ham. I am curing pork shoulder. I decided to to use pieces of pork shoulder because fat wise it has similar composition to a traditional ham and it is smaller and easier to work with. Eventually, after some practice, I plan on doing a whole ham, but right now I want to perfect my technique and my equipment.
Speaking of equipment, right now I have a mini-fridge, a temperature controller, and a humidity controller. The fridge serves as the chamber for curing and a cooling element. The temperate controller helps us keep it at our target temperature. Right now, I am just using the humidity controller to measure the humidity. If it is too low I may need to purchase a small humidifier to increase the humidity. If it is too high I may need to purchase some desiccants to make it lower. I could also get one of those 2 way humidity control packs they use for cigars. We’ll see on that. The target temperature is 50 degrees and the target humidity is 60–70%. Temperature is dialed in pretty well. As of writing this the humidity is 75%. A little higher than I want, but within acceptable limits. We will see how things go.
Now, on to recipe. This is important because we do everything by weight so if you don’t have a scale don’t try this at home. I used the equilibrium method of curing. Essentially put in the meat, 3% of the meat’s weight in salt, 1% of the meat’s weight in black pepper, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper, and .25% of the meat’s weight in Prague Powder #2 into a vacuum bag and vacuum seal it. I let it sit there for two weeks. After two weeks I tied them up, weighed them, and hanged them out to dry. I have seven little future mini-hams. The hams will be finished when they lose about 30% of their weight. My plan is to pull one ham each month for the next seven to enjoy the depths of flavor achieved from the aging process.
Why country hams? Why not all the wonderful variants of European hams? Because I am a Southern man who wants to connect to my Southern heritage. During the last season of Master Chef I got truly pissed off at Joe Bastianich. During the finale he’s ridiculing eventual champion Gerron Hurt who is doing all Southern inspired dishes. He wondered where the French and Italian technique was. Fuck that. Southern food is the United States own homegrown cuisine and deserves as much respect as any other culinary tradition. There’s no reason a well done country ham made from a well bred pig can’t stack up against the best hams of Spain and Italy.
So, as I take to this new hobby I also want to spread the gospel of Southern food and it’s tremendous history and quality. Check back in one month for our first tasting.
