Transform Pork into Delicious Gammon with This Simple Process

Recipe for Brine-Cured Ham

Making your own ham is quite easy and inexpensive. If you are curing for the first time, this recipe would be a good place to begin.

Most ham comes from a cured hind leg of pork, and a whole one can weigh up to 10 kg with the bones still in it. In the French way of charcuterie, hams can be made from more than just the noble cuts (legs and loin). The belly, hand, and forehock are also used. The meat may have been dry-cured in flavored salt or wet-cured in brine (salt dissolved in water), and the method of preparation will determine which method was used. The finest hams are dry-cured and are matured for many months before being eaten raw, thinly sliced. Wet-cured hams are usually sold already cooked and are ready to eat. If they are sold raw (and usually boned), they go by the alternate name of gammon. Gammon is an uncooked leg of pork that has been cured like bacon. Bacon, on the other hand, is usually made from the loin (back bacon), the belly (streaky bacon), or both (middle bacon). Good bacon can be made from shoulder cuts too (see: Bacon & Cabbage).

Making a whole dry-cured ham at home is an ambitious undertaking. There are many risks and the food will go bad at some point, so it won’t be ready to eat for at least nine months. However, it is very easy to wet-cure a much smaller piece of pork from a leg. The ham will be ready in as little as three weeks, but it can be aged for several more weeks. If you follow good hygiene, there isn’t much that can go wrong. A nice joint of baked and glazed ham can be the star of a Christmas buffet with very little work and for a lot less money than buying a similar joint during the busiest shopping time of the year. If it’s wanted for Christmas, try and get the curing underway by the end of November.

A pork joint is cured in brine for two weeks and then aged for a short time before being cooked in this easy recipe. You have three weeks to do nothing, but you should give yourself that much time. Cold-smoking the ham before it is cooked is optional. To cook the ham, you can either simmer it in water and then glaze it with a sugar-mustard paste in a hot oven, or you can wrap it in foil and bake it slowly in a moderate oven. Both methods are good.

This recipe employs an equilibrium method of curing. It is very important to make sure that the meat absorbs just the right amount of salt: enough to fully cure the meat without making it too salty. The salt is mixed with water to make brine, which is pretty strong at first. But as soon as the meat is put in the brine, it starts to soak up the salt. It takes longer for the brine to lose its strength until the meat is as salty as the brine. Once they are equal, the meat will not take in any more salt, even if it stays in the brine for a long time. Usually, you only need to make brine that is half as heavy (in water) as the meat you want to cure. This is enough to cover the meat without waste too much salt and flavorings. The salt level is calculated by reference to the combined weight of the meat and the water. Some of the salt is taken up by the meat, and the rest is thrown away when the brine is poured off at the end of the curing process. If you normally cure things, you can save the brine (boiling it up again every so often for cleanliness reasons) and add more salt to it before using it again. Indeed, you can keep a brine crock going in perpetuity and end up with a vintage strain. You can read an interesting account of the process in Jane Grigson’s Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), but since salt is so cheap, it’s really not worth the trouble for just a few curings.

• 2 kg boneless leg of pork
• Brine:1 ltr water82. 5 g ready-to-use curing salt #1 (see notes)50 g soft brown sugar 1 tsp peppercorns 1 tsp juniper berries 4 cloves Small piece of nutmeg (not ground) 3 sprigs of thyme A bay leaf .

• Because it takes longer than you think to cool, make the brine a few hours before you need it. Put all of the cure ingredients into a large saucepan and mix them together. Then, bring the brine to a steady boil. After 15 minutes, take the pan off the heat and put a lid on top of it. Leave the brine to cool down to room temperature. Before you start, you should find out how much liquid you need to cover the meat in the container you’ve chosen. The required volume will depend on the shape of the meat and the container. Cover the meat with water, and then count how much water you used. The ratio of meat to liquid should be between 1:2 and 1:1. Use that amount of clean water to mix your brine, and change the amounts of salt. 75%).
• Pour the brine over the meat in a bowl or container that is big enough to hold it all. Glass or food-grade polythene are good choices. Use a fine mesh strainer to catch all the spices as you pour the cooled brine over the meat. The meat will float, so you need to put something on top of it to stick it down. You can use anything you have on hand as long as it is not made of something that will react with the salt solution. I use an empty, clean glass pudding basin. It needs to be left alone for 24 hours in a cool place, like the fridge, with the lid on. After that, gently shake the container to mix the brine solution again. Over time, the salt will slowly seep into the meat as the strength of the salt solution decreases. The gentle stirring evens out the salt distribution in the solution to fully activate the cure.
• The meat should be cured for two weeks. Do this once or twice a day for a few days during that time. As it draws water out of the meat, the cure will become cloudy and may begin to taste sour. Your nose is the best way to tell if the meat is done. If it smells good, take it out of the brine and put it on a clean plate in the fridge while you boil the brine again for 5 minutes. Once it’s cool again, put it back in the container for curing and pour it through a fine strainer. Put the meat back in the brine and start curing it again. You can add 100 ml of fresh water and 2 75 g of curing salt, as you reboil the solution.
• Once the meat is ready, take it out of the brine and place it on a clean board. Carefully squeeze out as much water as you can. Like you would when you wrap a package, wrap the meat in a clean piece of muslin or a clean tea towel and tie it up with string. Hang the meat from a string loop in a cool place where air can flow around it. Put a plate or other container under it to catch any drips. I use the hanging rail of a wardrobe in a spare bedroom that isn’t heated, but you can make do with anything—an unheated porch or even a garden shed will work.
• The ham can be smoked (see notes) after a week, or it can be wrapped in a clean cloth again and left to age even more. Otherwise, it is ready to be cooked. You should check your ham carefully to make sure it hasn’t gone bad: it should look good and smell good. Decide whether you are going to boil or bake it. In that case, the ham should be soaked in a lot of clean, cold water for 12 to 24 hours. Soaking brings back some of the water that was lost during the curing process and takes some of the salt out. There’s no need to soak the meat first; cooking the ham will work just fine if you boil it.
• To boil the ham, weigh it and figure out how long it needs to cook at 30 minutes for every 500 grams. To keep them in good shape, I usually tie mine with kitchen string. To cook the ham, put it in a pan and add 1 liter of cold water for every 500 grams of ham. Boil the water. Taste the water after 10 minutes. If it’s very salty, throw it away and start over with fresh water. Regulate the heat so that the water simmers steadily. Put the ham in the oven 30 minutes before it’s done cooking and heat it to 190–200°C. If you want to glaze it, take it off the heat. Have ready suitable glaze ingredients. You can get creative, but a simple mix of soft brown sugar and mustard that has already been made works well. With a sharp knife, cut off the skin, leaving as much fat as possible. If you want, score the fat, but don’t cut all the way through to the lean meat. Cover the ham with the glaze mixture and bake it in the oven for about 20 minutes. Let the ham rest for 15 minutes if you want to serve it hot. If not, let it cool down all the way and then cut it up as needed. Putting the cooked ham in greaseproof paper (rather than plastic wrap) will keep it fresh for at least a week. Take it out of the fridge about an hour before you want it. The meat will taste better if it’s not cold from the fridge.
• For cooking (baking), place the meat on a roasting rack in a moderate oven (about 170°C) and loosely wrap it in two layers of kitchen foil. Even though the cooking time will depend on how heavy the ham is, the times are the same as when you boil something (30 minutes for every 500 g). When I bake a ham, I don’t like to glaze it because the glaze makes the meat’s surface too hard and dry. When the joint comes out of the oven, let it rest for about an hour before taking the skin off. Toast homemade golden breadcrumbs in a dry frying pan and press them into the surface of the fat that’s showing. Cover the ham and let it cool completely before cutting into it the next day.

How to cook gammon

FAQ

How is pork turned into gammon?

What cut of pork is used to make gammon?

What is gammon called in America?

What is the difference between pork and gammon?

How do you cook Gammon in a tin?

Score the fat with a small sharp knife into a diamond pattern. Place the gammon joint into a foil-lined roasting tin. Five: Mix together the glaze ingredients (honey, mustard, and demerara sugar) and pour three-quarters of it over the gammon (use a pastry brush to spread it evenly over the layer of fat). Bake for 15 minutes in the oven.

How do you cook Gammon in the oven?

Preheat the oven to **170°C/Gas 3** .2.Line a large deep roasting dish with foil to hang over the sides .3.Score the skin and dry the meat with kitchen paper .4. Rub half of the

Are Gammon smoked?

The array of gammon available is vast once you start looking. Once you’ve settled on buying good quality pork (rare breeds such as Tamworth and Gloucester Old Spot are raised on a small-scale and make very good eating), there is the curing and smoking to consider. Gammon is sold wet-cured or dry-cured, smoked or unsmoked (green).

How do you cook a gammon joint?

Soak the 2 kg Gammon/Ham Joint (4 ½ lb) for a few hours in cold water, we normally do it overnight, or if you don’t have time, rinse under cold water a few times to wash away excess saltiness. Place in a deep pan, fat side up, and fill the pan with enough water to cover the gammon joint. Add 2 Bay Leaves and bring to a boil.