How To Make Homemade Smoked Ham - Recipe

[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.

[Jonathon]

moffitt7707 You said “I bought the blue ribbon maple bacon seasoning stick” did you buy the snack stick seasoning? That isn’t the same type of cure, you should have bought Blue Ribbon Maple Ham as that is formulated as a ham cure, the stick one is formulated for being ground and formed. I honestly don’t even know if it is able to be soluble?

Let me know if that is what you did and I will see if I can get some help from our application specialist to convert this.

You asked about a chart, did you mean this? https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/700/cure-conversion-chart

[moffitt7707]

thank you for your help.

[AaronSilves]

Do you have/need to use the sodium eryothrobate? I thought it was just a cure accelerator like encapsulated citric acid, so I didn’t get any. Figured to let it sit for a 24-48 hrs before smoking. Which way is best? Thanks

[Jonathon]

AaronSilves Yup, it is just a cure accelerator so if you don’t add it you just have to hold it and let the cure have time to work It shouldn’t have any effect on taste/texture.

[AaronSilves]

Jonathon how much hold time, I’ve got about a 30 lb green ham? Is there a chart?

[Jonathon]

AaronSilves We dont have a chart, are you injecting and holding in a 50% strength solution?

[AaronSilves]

Jonathon that was the plan. This will be my first time doing ham.

[Jonathon]

AaronSilves You should be good with 7 days as long as you inject it well and hold it. The x# of days per inch of meat doesn’t come into it when you inject it.

[Rlane420]

Followed the recipe except sure gel. This was my first ham and it was amazing.

[Jonathon]

Rlane420 that ooks delicious man, good job!

[George T]

After injecting and soaking over night in cover brine whats the maximum time I can hold before smoking? I just built a large smoker and would like to smoke multiple hams at one time but don’t have the fridge space to soak them all at once

[Jonathon]

George T I assume you mean keeping it in a 50% strength solution? If you mean out of the solution not long, it will start to expel water and might even gas out. If you mean in a 50% don’t do it more than 8ish days. We are only adding nitrite which is “quick” curing power. For longer cures you need nitrate which breaks down into nitrite over time.