How to cure and cook Ham at home, recipe

Home Cured, home cooked ham

Home made ham

Home cured, home cooked ham can be one of the nicest things to eat, plus if done well, will always look impressive. You can amaze your friends by curing a whole leg of pork and cooking it for the sum total of about one man hour of effort (or woman hour, its christmas after all). Not a bad return when you also consider the cost of buying one that is ready done.

Requirements

• a plastic bin big enough for the pork. I literally bought a swing top bin.
• some curing salt
• a cool place
• leg of pork
• brown sugar and mustard for the glaze
• a big pot to cook it in

Ok, a simple and short list, but here are the details. The 'bin' needs to be an appropriate size and shape for both what you are going to cure and where you are going to do it. I bought a fairly narrow bottomed swing top bin, as I cure mine in the bottom of an old fridge and it fitted the space. Also it means that when the pork is in, its easy to trap it against the side and weigh it down (with an old, plastic, 4 pint milk container full of water). If you've got a swimming pool, imagine keeping a leg of pork under water. So its fairly snug with a whole leg, but also fine if you want to do a piece of belly or loin for bacon, or a bit of salt / corned beef, or brine your Christmas turkey (oh 'ello, we can do all that? Same bin, same brine)

Some curing salt, I got mine from www.weschenfelder.co.uk, and used the butchers quick cure. If its your first time, don't muck about and be clever, I've done that! Buy this proper cure make it up to the instructions, add more sugar than it says (about double) and sling your pork in it. I've tried doing ham using cider, apple juice, juniper, bay, treacle, molasses, etc etc etc, a very long list! I cant taste the difference! Gosh what an admittance! All these posh chefs go on about adding a bit of this or a bit of that......Dont't gild the lily, perfectly cured, cooked, glazed and baked ham is wonderful, and it doesn't need anything else.

I will admit that if you add treacle, the ham goes an attractive dark colour, which I like, but that is it. Trust me this will be impressive enough, it doesn't need and extra anything.

A cool place, this is going to be in for a while and it needs to be kept cool. Second hand fridge on ebay is around £40, shop bought whole leg of ham £60-£90. After its cured it will need to hang a while to mature and so that the cure etc can equalise, so a fridge big enough for that as well would be a good idea.

Leg of pork! Well alright! Get the best one you can....common sense! Outdoor reared, free range slow grown, it all adds a bit, and this is a fairly simple product so it stands or falls on the quality of the pork. However, if I'm honest, hamming improves pork, so even a cheap leg will come out fine. For this recipe we had a 6.5 kg leg of pork bone in. Thats not huge but its plenty to go at and much easier than a really big one for all sorts of reasons. The biggest one I did was 11 kgs! The cooking time alone meant i had to have a day off work!

A big pot to cook it in...seriously...think about this before you buy the pork! You need a BIG pot, see if you can borrow one. Ask anywhere they do catering (but maybe not commercially) so the local school/nursery, the local village hall kitchen etc in case they have a spare. You are not getting this in a saucepan! Also think of the weight....6.5kg of pork, in a pot topped up with 15 kgs of water...and its going to be hot when its done, and stay hot for hours.....So two sturdy handles, big enough hob, and a helper!

Curing Stage

Ready? Excited? shall we begin? Right, get yer bin, put some water in it ( you can put it on bathroom scales, or just count in the measuring jug fulls to get the volume) I used about 13 litres of water, half the pack of curing salt and a pound of caster sugar. Now the first trick, have some ice cubes ready, and add them, using them to make up your total water requirement. This cools the brine down so you can use it immediately, as it will take 24 hours to bring the water down to fridge temperature (unless your water is really cold, for some reason ours isn't). Stick your bin in the fridge, put your leg of pork in, weigh it down with your milk bottle, go and have a cup of tea....I reckon thats 12 - 15 mins work, and you are nearly done!

Trick number two....to be completely honest, I also injected mine a few times with the brine, down the edge of the bone. Now its not strictly necessary, but if its going to taint, its going to do it around the bone, and thats the bit that is furthest from the cure, and so is the last bit to get done. Hence big marianade syringe, stab it through at right angles to the bone and give it a squirt....Now the purists are rolling their eyes, not only haven't I dry cured, but now I'm injecting....tut tut. Well I'll tell you the truth, brining makes better ham! Its moister, its reliable, its safe and it works. I do a lot of dry curing, salami, bacon, breasola etc, trust me, brine your ham.

Ok its plopped in, leave it for ten days (6.5 kg ham), thats it! Remember the brine only really penetrates through the cut side, not the skin so as long as you've placed it so thats accessible, you're all done.

Maturing/equalisation

Sounds an odd heading, but the reasons are this: The ham nearest the brine is the saltiest, the ham furthest away the least salty (kind of..trust me!) so in hanging it up now, you give the cure/salt time to spread (if it needs to) and generally equalise throughout the meat to make it uniform. Remember once its out, no more salt is being added, its just redistributing. So for the very ham in the picture above it had 13 days. It dries a little in this time but not much. ( I have check weighed meat hanging in the fridge and while equipment can vary, I see very little weight loss at fridge temperatures with the humidity above 75%) Thats it, about another two minutes, I guess.

Cooking

Now before cooking I pre soaked the ham for exactly 12 hours. The end result was less salty than it could have been, so slightly less soaking would have been ok...In other words you do have some margin for error.

Fill your big pot with water enough to cover the beast...carry it to the cooker without giving yourself a hernia, and get it on the heat, it'll take a while. Fetch your leg of pork and put it straight in and wait for it to warm up......

Super important, ultimate trick to making perfect ham.....temperature is vital!! Vital, I say....You will need two thermometers, one for the water, and one to test the ham for doneness. The water needs never to boil, any recipe that says boil your ham for blah, blah, blah....is rubbish and should be put in the recycling. They have obviously never made ham before. The water needs to be 80 degrees centigrade, thats barely a simmer. Timing...once again any recipe that says boil for 20, 30,40 minutes a pound is pants unless they specify the temperature, its not going to be precise enough. If you must know a timing, cos you dont want it to bugger up pub time, then I would have to say 17 minutes and 14 seconds a pound at 80C, approximately! But the real test of when its done, is when a probe thermometer says 67C. 

If you cook it too hot or too long, you will know because it will be dry and 'stringy' to look at. When its right the cut side will be smooth and slightly soft, and it will carve excellent slices. If you cant get good slices and your knife is sharp, then you cooked it to long or too hot.

I cant believe some of the instructions in recipe books, talk about vague, and if you knacker a whole leg of pork, it makes you want to cry. Its not the money, its just such a shame, such a waste, when the instructions are so simple.

Glazing and baking

Ok so the ham is out, you need to carefully skin it leaving as much fat on the ham as you can. The skin normally comes off easy so its a bit slippery but not hard.

Then you need to score the fat in a diamond pattern. Try to do it as deep as possible without breaking through to the meat. Then stick it with cloves in the diamond shapes in the fat, and apply your glaze.

Tip...do this when that ham is still warm from the cooking, but not so warm that you burn yourself. Dont let it get cold and do it the next day, because the glaze wont spread nicely and the ham sucks all the heat out of the oven so that it takes ages for the glaze to caramalise, which means it gets overcooked etc. Put the ham on a big baking tray which has been lined with tinfoil (cos once the glaze is baked onto your tin, you'll never get it off) The glaze is brown sugar and mustard, mix it up to taste, but as you work it the suger dissolves into a gooey paste. Spread it on top..Put is in a hot oven 200 - 220 and check it after 10 minutes (one recipe I read said an hour!!) its done when it looks done. When you pull it out and gasp, thats enough time!

The Eating

Once you've let it cool, it needs to be refrigerated, it will then keep for around a week. When you slice it you should get pink 'soft' meat and a smooth cut surface. It will be devine on its own, with pickles, in a sandwich, with your fingers, even with a knife and fork. I've made a few now, and this is the recipe and method I'm happiest with.

The Final Secret

I was recently 'persuading' a chum of mine to try oysters with me, the comment came back that he had had them before and wasn't very keen. I told him the difference now was the company he was in (conceited? moi!) he tried them...he liked (tolerated) them. Both of us then tried the same ruse on someone else, and again it (sort of) worked.

The ham in the photo I cured and mostly cooked on my own, but by some strange coincidence about half an hour before the end of cooking the door bell kept going, and people kept arriving. It was coming up to Christmas so some had cards, or pressies for the kids (none brought drink). I then had to take the ham out of the cooking liquor, skin it and glaze it with an audience, and lots of spurious advice. 

As it was a couple of days before Christmas I offered everyone a drink. One thing lead to another and I think we consumed a quarter bottle of Gin, a half bottle of Whiskey, some red wine and a couple of beers. It was one of the most enjoyable afternoons of cooking, banter and tasting that I've had. So the final secret....its still all about the company!

With thanks to the Scouser for drinking my Gin, Cleeve for sage advice, Farmer Giles without whom I would be nothing, and Crazy Andy for everything else including the photo...oh and my mum for telling me I was doing it wrong!