How To Make Homemade Smoked Ham - Recipe

[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.

[George T]

Austin said in How To Make Homemade Smoked Ham - Recipe:

@j-ott
That is hard to say exactly because it greatly depends on your individual smoker, how well it holds an accurate temp, the humidity, etc. The least amount of time I’d plan for is 11 hours total, but you are probably looking at 12 hours, or just a slight bit over.

I smoked my first ham yesterday it was about 8 lbs I followed your schedule it took 15 hours to get to 148 I had multiple probes in and around the ham so I trust the temp was right any Ideas why it took so long? holding a steady 190 in the smoker internal only gained 1 degree per hour for the last 3 hours I had a large pan of water in the smoker could the humidity be to high?
Anyhow the ham turned out perfect just wonder why so long

[Jonathon]

George T I’ve had 12 hour smoke schedule before. Without a commercial smoker, that can change the amount of humidity in the air, you are in for a long smoke with ham. 14 hours is long but not terrible honestly. The only way to speed it up would be to increase the temp or humidity. Towards the end bumping it up even higher probably wont be an issue. Just don’t raise it too much or too early or you will cook/dry the outside.

[Groucho Smith]

If I’m using the country brown sugar cure and cold phosphate to inject and brine how long do I brine? 24 hrs or does it need to be longer?