How To Make Homemade Smoked Ham - Recipe

[Jonathon]

Okay, ignore everything else. This is going to be a recipe tailored for you based 24 lb ham weight:
First, we are going to make your injection, ingredients for that will be:
Get 1 gallon of water and mix in 2 oz of your cold phosphate (mix really really well and this ingredient HAS to be first)
Use 2 lb of country brown sugar cure to the 1 gallon of water
Mix in 0.85 OUNCE of the California Ham Spice to the 1 gallon of water

Next you are going to inject to 10%:
Your ham(s) weighs 24 lb now, when you are finished injecting they should weigh 26.4 lb as they now have 2.4 lb of the solution mixed in.

Then we will make your cover brine:
Weigh your remaining solution 1 gallon of water is about 8 lb, 2 lb of cure (other additives negligible) so you have 10 lb but you injected 2.4 lb into your hams so you should have 7.6 lb of solution left. Now, take 7.6 (or whatever your left over actually weighs) and add that amount again of fresh water. This gives you your 50% strength cover brine. How you are going to cover this for 3-4 days I don’t know, don’t freeze it though. My suggestion would be to get something like a Stark Butcket Liner and use that to encapsulate the hams and the cover brine but you have to do something here. Just injecting and moving on isn’t going to allow the cure to equalize in the meat and to allow the cure time to work. If you had added something like sodium erythorbate you could just hold for 24 hours but even then 3 days is really going to give you a better flavor profile

For thermal processing:
1 Hour at 120° with no smoke
2 Hours 140° and begin smoking
4 Hours at 190° until internal temperature reaches 145° Ham doesn’t need to be cooked to 160° as it is a whole muscle meat. If you are making a ground and formed ham then it needs to go to 160°. I have no idea why we did 160° in our initial video, I am adding a note to that but leaving the 160° n there as well, it isn’t going to hurt anything.

If you have any other question before you start please start a new topic as Urgent, that’ll get my attention quicker than a normal post will.

[cu_hunting]

Thank you very much!!! You are awesome! I do have sodium erythorbate, as I bought all ingredients from the first recipe on hoa to make a ham. I have food grade buckets and the liners too, I am all set! Thanks again!

[cu_hunting]

Also you want to cook pork to 160 degrees to prevent Trichinosis… curing smoking doesn’t kill the parasite.

[Jonathon]

cu_hunting My understanding is that the USDA lowered the requirement of pork to 145 after the # of trichinosis cases from pork fell to an absurdly low level. Now, that isn’t going to be of comfort to anyone who does happen to get it but I believe the studies they did found bear to be the biggest offender.

[cu_hunting]

Jonathon commercial pork is much safer than home grown pork like my hog that I butchered last Saturday.

[TexLaw]

Jonathon HERE is that study you referred to. It was a survey done by the CDC in 2015. They found that USA commercial pork was the source of 2 whole cases in the USA from 2011-2015. Bear was tied to 25.

cu_hunting As it turns out, that survey also tied only 2 cases to farm-raised swine.

[Jonathon]

TexLaw Thanks for finding that!

[cu_hunting]

Jon thank you for all your help!!! Quick question if I use sodium erythorbate with all the ingredients mentioned, do I let it soak for just 24 hours or can it soak longer? Will it become too salty? Does it need rinsing and soaking in water after the soak? Thank you so much!!! Too bad you don’t have a tip jar that I could donate to… You have been an amazing help to me and I greatly appreciate it!!!

[cu_hunting]

Okay I’m mad at myself… I forgot to include the sodium erythorbate in the injection, but I did include it into the cover brine. Not sure if that will help me at all or not? So mad at myself you wouldn’t believe it… All this time and prep… Trying to do everything right and I forget something…

[Jonathon]

cu_hunting Let it soak for 4-5 days if you didn’t include the sodium erythorbate, sorry but the cure needs that amount of time to work since it wasn’t accelerated.

[cu_hunting]

Jonathon do I need rinse or soak the hams in water after it’s done with the brine soak? Thank you so much! Do you have a way to tip you guys? I want to show my appreciation for all your help!

[Jonathon]

cu_hunting lol no, thank you though! Buy stuff from Walton’s that’s it, entire reason Austin set meatgistics up was to help our customers get the most out of their purchases. It has sprawled past what I thought it would be but at its core its still based on helping customers make good products!

[Jonathon]

cu_hunting Oh shoot sorry, I didnt respond to the ham rinse question. People do both, some rinse and some don’t. If you don’t like a lot of salt I’d say rinse it but if you are looking for that salty flavor go ahead and go right to smokehouse.

A good way to rinse is put it in a bucket in a sink and fill the bucket, then turn the water on low and let it fill and drain for 20 minutes. Obviously make sure the bucket isn’t blocking the drain so it can all drain out of the sink though.

I don’t rinse ham buit I do bacon, if that helps

[grenier32]

I have 12 fresh boneless hams that I am getting ready to inject, cure, and smoke. My question is do I take the combined weight and divide by 25lbs to calculate my Cold Phosphate and Sure Cure amounts or do I need to take an average weight of a single boneless ham?

[grenier32]

Jonathon I have 12 fresh boneless hams that I am getting ready to inject, cure, and smoke. My question is do I take the combined weight and divide by 25lbs to calculate my Cold Phosphate and Sure Cure amounts or do I need to take an average weight of a single boneless ham? I am planning on smoking this weekend. Thanks for the help!!!

[Jonathon]

grenier32 Weigh all of them then add that weight up and calculate the amount. Then inject each one individually so it is pumped to the correct %. But we need to know a few things here. First, why add sure cure? Ham/Bacon Cures already have the cure mixed in to correctly impart a specific amount of ongoing nitrate in PPM. What cure are you using? 2nd, you are doing 12? Are you doing this commercially or do you just have a bunch of friends family who all want hams?

[grenier32]

Jonathon I made a mistake I meant Sure Gel not Sure Cure. I am using the Country Brown Suger Cure. I am not doing it commercially I raise a few pigs every year for myself and my family. This year we raised 6 and everyone wants ham so I decided to bone them out to cure and Smoke. Each Ham is around 9.5 lbs +/-. I am going to mix the following please let me know if you see any problems with my calculations

Total Weight= 114lbs
4 Gallons of water
9oz Cold Phosphate
27oz Sure Gel
4lbs Country Brown Suger Cure
1oz California Ham SPice
.48oz Sodium Erythorbate

Inject 20% or around 3 gallons total
Then hold in a 50% solution for 24-48hrs

Thanks for the advice and help!! This is the only place I will come to for all my meat processing equipment and seasoning mix!!!

[grenier32]

Jonathon The Hams look great we ended up smoking 12 hams and 12 slabs of Bacon this weekend. Long weekend but worth it. Quick question. I got the Hams up to between 136-142 internal. I know this is a little short of the 145 but I ran out of propane and it was very late. As long as when we eat the hams we bring it up to 145 we should be ok correct??

[Jonathon]

grenier32 Yes, that is me Jon tremblay saying that not me a Walton’s Employee!

[moffitt7707]

Hi Do you have a chart for the pork leg making into ham? I bought a 19 # bone in ham. I bought the blue ribbon maple bacon seasoning stick. It says to add in 1oz of sure cure for the whole bag. I want to do injection to sit for 8 days. I have the ham spice, sodium Erthorbate. Then I would do a salt and brown sugar rub on out side. I would like to try this maple but don’t want too mess it up.