How To Make Homemade Smoked Ham - Recipe
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cu_hunting Nope, not dumb questions, at least not in my mind. Now, a store-bought ham or bacon might be better than your first few tries, depending on what you like. Hams can be difficult to get really good at but once you get it a homemade product should be similar/superior. For bacon, once you make one or two yours should be superior to what you can buy in the store.
Add ham spice for sure, without it you won’t get much of a “ham” taste, they are using something similar in the hams you are getting from a store. For the bacon the Bacon Taste Booster is designed to add old world bacon taste when using modern curing techniques like injecting and tumbling, so that won’t throw it off either.
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I’ve made ham twice now, it’s been small wild hog hams. The first was boneless. I injected it per the recipe. It turned out a bit salty, but otherwise excellent. The last one I did was bone-in, and weighed 4 pounds. I didn’t have sure gel and used carrot fiber instead. I injected and cooked as before. However in this finished ham there were obvious pockets of cure that were a bit unappetizing. Again, otherwise the flavor was great. I have two questions, first do you think the carrot fiber sub was an issue? I noticed that the injection mixture was pretty thick going in. Secondly, do you think soaking would be more effective than injection on such a small ham? And as far as cooking schedule on such a small ham, I shortened each temp/time period by about half, is that the right move? Thanks!
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I’ve made ham twice now, it’s been small wild hog hams. The first was boneless. I injected it per the recipe. It turned out a bit salty, but otherwise excellent. The last one I did was bone-in, and weighed 4 pounds. I didn’t have sure gel and used carrot fiber instead. I injected and cooked as before. However in this finished ham there were obvious pockets of cure that were a bit unappetizing. Again, otherwise the flavor was great. I have two questions, first do you think the carrot fiber sub was an issue? I noticed that the injection mixture was pretty thick going in. Secondly, do you think soaking would be more effective than injection on such a small ham? And as far as cooking schedule on such a small ham, I shortened each temp/time period by about half, is that the right move? Thanks!
bcompton53
I forgot to add that in the first ham, due to the aforementioned confusion in the recipe, I injected and also let sit in brine for 4 days. The last ham was just soaked overnight. In both cases I left out the sodium Erythorbate. -
bcompton53 I would imagine that the Carrot Fiber played a part in your cure not equalizing. They do sell an injectable carrot fiber but its only available for special order from Excalibur. Since it gets so thick I imagine your cure was mostly bound up in the carrot fiber and it couldn’t travel everywhere. With a 4 lb you can inject or brine it, the only thing that would concern me would be green bone even with such a small ham, it’s unlikely though so you should be ok.
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bcompton53 I would imagine that the Carrot Fiber played a part in your cure not equalizing. They do sell an injectable carrot fiber but its only available for special order from Excalibur. Since it gets so thick I imagine your cure was mostly bound up in the carrot fiber and it couldn’t travel everywhere. With a 4 lb you can inject or brine it, the only thing that would concern me would be green bone even with such a small ham, it’s unlikely though so you should be ok.
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To reduce saltiness can/should the ham be placed in cold fresh water for a couple hours after the cover brine before smoking? Not sure if it will have the same saltiness reducing effect as say on a dry cured bacon?
HTCMTF I was wondering the same thing, about whether the brine should be rinsed prior to smoking similar to the dry bacon rub. Did you do this? If so what were the results like? Im about to make hams and bacon from 4 pigs we slaughtered.
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Ryan Stephens Add all seasonings at once. Create more of your brine that you need to inject and then use the remainder of the brine that was not injected as the base for your 50% cover brine. TO do this just weigh the amount of solution you have left and then add that weight in water. So if you had 1 gallon of brine left add 1/2 gallon of fresh water. If that is not enough to cover your ham you can add another 1/4 of the weight (in this case that would be 1/4 gallon) to the brine before you would have to add anymore cure.
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Ryan Stephens I ended up soaking it over night, (12 hours ish). Came out great. My wife is the one with the salt sensitivity issue. She said it was noticeably less compared to simply rinsing. Could be all in her head, lol. Same recipe both times. Good luck!
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Also, personally I like this video 100s of times better as I talk more like a human being than a weird robot! https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/801/cured-whole-muscle-meat-105-ham-basics
Get more help with your processing questions and learn more about processing meat by subscribing to our waltonsinc.com youtube page at https://wltns.link/waltonstv I am a Gorilla, love yourself
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Also, personally I like this video 100s of times better as I talk more like a human being than a weird robot! https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/801/cured-whole-muscle-meat-105-ham-basics
Jonathon
Hams turned out amazing!!! Nice and juicy!
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Ryan Stephens Sure looks awesome!
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napacorey Are you looking for vacuum level and time? If so set speed tp 50, pull a 20" vacuum and go for 3 hours. That still requires an injection by the way.
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Some of the directions and ingredient lists are kind of confusing at times because you use different units of measure. Like for instance for a 10% pump, or use 2lb of brown sugar cure for a 24 lb ham… I think it would be better to list it out per pound, so like 1.33 oz of brown sugar cure per pound of ham or something along those lines. Or is it per gallon of water… I think I am confusing myself. So it’s the strength or solution that is consistent and won’t vary, but the weight or how much you pump in is the variable and will be a percentage of the green weight of the ham… I think I am answering my own question here… lol Okay but then why does the Excalibur listing say to use 2lb per gallon of water, and your recipe is 2lb per 2 gallons of water… Uuhg I am going to be doing this on Saturday and I need to get this right, it has to be perfect. 2 hams and 2 pork bellies for bacon.
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cu_hunting I agree it can be confusing, maybe I need to split the post into 2 different ways to do it, one that would be using the full gallon of water and 1 that would be for a small single ham?
Basically, Add 2 lb of cure to 1 gallon of water and inject your ham until it weighs 20% more than it did before you began pumping it. Then weigh the remaining solution that wasn’t injected and add that weight in fresh water. This will give you the 50% strength covering solution that the ham will sit in to allow the cure to equalize within in the meat.
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cu_hunting I agree it can be confusing, maybe I need to split the post into 2 different ways to do it, one that would be using the full gallon of water and 1 that would be for a small single ham?
Basically, Add 2 lb of cure to 1 gallon of water and inject your ham until it weighs 20% more than it did before you began pumping it. Then weigh the remaining solution that wasn’t injected and add that weight in fresh water. This will give you the 50% strength covering solution that the ham will sit in to allow the cure to equalize within in the meat.
Jonathon is the recipe wrong then? 2lb cure per 2 gallons water? for the country brown sugar cure… or is it 2lb cure for 1 gallon of water? to inject it… then half strength for cover brine for 24 hours…
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cu_hunting follow this process https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/801/cured-whole-muscle-meat-105-ham-basics while I fix this one. I’m thinking that something changed because not only the post but also the video says 2 gallons for a 20% pump but now the instructions on the bag/box of country brown says 2 lb to 1 gallon for a 10% pump.
There will be an update on this later today
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cu_hunting follow this process https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/801/cured-whole-muscle-meat-105-ham-basics while I fix this one. I’m thinking that something changed because not only the post but also the video says 2 gallons for a 20% pump but now the instructions on the bag/box of country brown says 2 lb to 1 gallon for a 10% pump.
There will be an update on this later today
Jonathon Hi Jon, It’s crunch time… I have been doing everything I can to find out the best information on how to make hams, bacon etc… for months I have been preparing and to find out now that the information I have now is wrong is really freaking me out. I now have two 25 pound hams on ice in my cooler waiting to be processed because I don’t know which recipe to follow. I want them to turn out perfect. I have all the ingredients listed out on the country brown sugar cure. I don’t have a cooler or a refrigerator that can hold these hams. My only option is to keep them on ice until I can cure them, or last option is to freeze them. So the recipe called for 2 oz California Ham Spice 0.24 oz Sodium Erythorbate, 2 oz Cold Phosphate for a 24 pound ham and 2 gallons of water with the 2lb of brown sugar cure which was wrong. So it’s 2 lb per 1 gallon of water… The final temp changed too from 160 to 145 degrees??? Why the change? I need all the help I can get within the next couple days to get the right recipe down to be able to get the best hams I can get. Thank you!!!
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