My first (piece of) ham - with as much detail as possible...
Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 7:03 pmMy very first ham.
Not difficult and actually rather good.
I'll be doing another soon.
Here's what I did
A small (745g inc skin) rolled and tied, boneless pork leg joint, actually free range Hampshire, from Waitrose.
I found a tallish (deep) bowl that would contain the joint and in which it could be fully submerged by a fairly small quantity of brine.
Weighing the joint, minus a little juice in the packet, recorded 736g on my scales.
I put the joint in the bowl and filled it up with water, to discover the quantity of brine needed. It was conveniently pretty close to 1 litre.
I went along with the general consensus of using a brine of about 120g/l salt. Because I wanted it to be, if anything, slightly sweet rather than salty, I actually used 100g of salt, and about 100g of sugar (80g granulated and two spoonfuls of honey).
To that I added 3 fresh bay leaves and about half a dozen dried juniper berries.
And 2g of saltpetre. (Even though the convention is 6g/litre, I've decided I'd actually use slightly less next time. See later.)
I warmed the brine and stirred to get everything to dissolve, and then cooled it. Meanwhile the pork was left to warm itself up towards room temperature. Using saltpetre, one depends on the bacterial flora for the saltpetre aspect of the cure to work, so since I was going to be dosing it with lots of salt and saltpetre, I was quite happy to let all the flora develop a little before starting to deal with the bad guys.
With brine and meat both close to room temp, the meat went into the brine with a clean saucer on top to sink it. The top of the bowl was sealed with cling film and it was put on the top shelf of a fridge - where the temperature was known (from measurement) to be in the neighbourhood of 6C.
The idea was to do an "equilibrium cure" where the meat takes up all the water, saltpetre, salt and sugar that it cares to. For this the timing isn't critical. It just has to be long enough. I judged a week about the minimum at 6C for my joint. I think it could go for a couple of months without a problem.
I gave it two weeks. During that time it was actually completely ignored. I think it should have been stirred a couple of times, but no harm came of ignoring it.
After two weeks, the joint was removed from the brine and weighed - it registered 800g. Thus the weight "pickup" from the brine was 8.8%
The meat exterior was a rather white colour, like boiled pork, and with only the merest trace of pink.
I found my largest pan, and estimate its full capacity as about 7 litres.
I moved the empty pan to the cooker.
The joint was put in the pan and the pan was filled with cold water.
The joint sank to the bottom.
A small china saucer was found and put under the joint to keep it out of contact with the potentially rather hot base of the pan. The joint was still fully submerged.
A digital probe thermometer was inserted into the centre of the meat, and, using clothes pegs, a dial type meat thermometer was clipped in place to measure the water temperature.
Heat was applied at a moderate rate - much less than the ring could supply. As the water slowly warmed it was frequently stirred, not least to even out the temperature.
With the water at 60C (and the meat core in the low 30's), it was decided to taste it for saltiness, to see if the water needed to be changed to flush out excess salt from the meat.
It tasted very bland indeed.
There being no need to change the water, I added 1 and 1/2 roughly chopped carrots, half a white onion studded with 6 elderly cloves and a bouquet garni.
Once the water temperature reached the mid 70'sC, I began to turn down the heat, and the maximum water temperature was in low 80's. (The frequency of stirring of the water to equalise temperature was maintained throughout.)
From the point of starting to turn the burner down, it was only about 20 minutes until the meat temperature reached 64C, and I carefully moved the pan off the heat.
However the meat temperature continued to rise, peaking at 73C, slightly higher than I had intended.
Once the meat temperature had fallen to the mid 30'sC, the probe was removed and the meat was transferred to a small pan. The veg and herbs were put in with the meat, and the pan was filled with a little of the poaching broth.
A saucer, tin can, and 1 litre fruitjuice tetrapak were then used to apply about 2kg weight to the meat as it was set to chill in the fridge.
The following day, it was discovered that the meat, still rather pallid and grey, was set into clear jelly.
The meat was removed from the pan, the skin carved away and a sample slice immediately cut.
I really didn't want to mess around with glazes or even decorative breadcrumbs. I wanted to see and taste what I'd made!
It was beautiful pink ham inside!
The colour actually appeared more even than the photo suggests...
The texture was firm, without being chewy. The meat was moist, not at all dry, and yet not "wet". And there was the jelly for a little juice.
It had a splendid ham taste. Not at all salty, not discernibly sweet, and with just a light herbal note from the bay leaves and bouquet garni. I couldn't isolate the taste of juniper or cloves, but I think that they contributed to the overall rather pleasant flavour.
It was actually damn good. Way, way better than any reasonable expectation for a first attempt. Frankly, I wasn't surprised, I was utterly astonished.
If I'm going to be super-critical, (and I tend to be, especially of myself), then I'd say that the only problem was a slightly too noticeable 'tang' from the nitrate. I'm certain I've tasted a stronger 'tang' in some commercial hams.
Anyway, next time, I intend to reduce the nitrate by perhaps 1/3, and see what happens.
Anyway, here's a rough calculation, following the equilibrium method from the FDA meat inspector's calculation handbook.
http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1906 (but please note my warning about their strange idea of "percentages".)
The brine was about 1200g, lets call it 1250.
The meat was 735g, lets call it 750.
So 3/8 (750/2000) of the total was meat.
Hence, at equilibrium, 3/8 of the original 2g of potassium nitrate would be in the meat
ie 6/8 (0.75) of a gram.
Against 750g meat that is 1/1000 th of the meat weight.
Which is 1000ppm (potassium) nitrAte "ingoing" against the FDA limit of 700ppm ingoing in immersion cured (non-bacon) meat for US sale. (Note that the limit is just 200ppm for ingoing nitrIte.)
Remembering that their limit is calculated for *sodium* nitrate, and that I used potassium, there's a 20% adjustment that the FDA don't bother with for simplicity, so I don't think my 1000 against an adjusted limit of 940 was actually anywhere near dangerous.
But I do actually think it would have been (even) better with less. Even if the "standard" brine advised on this site is 6g/litre saltpetre and dear Mrs Grigson advises more than double that (2oz/gallon), next time I'll be trying about 1.3g/litre...
If I had used 1/3 less saltpetre, with the same meat and quantity of brine, I'd have hit 667 ppm.
I'll take more careful aim next time.
But I think I may have to buy a set of drug dealer's scales to weigh out such tiny quantities accurately...
I reckon that my equilibrium salt content of the meat would have been about 5%, but doing the simmering in water that was 10x the weight of meat, left it perhaps slightly lower than the 2% salt found in a typical commercial ham. Anyway, the final salt level was just fine for me.
I offer the above in the hope that it may be helpful to others contemplating having a go.
I'd strongly recommend that you give it a try.
Once you get past the stage of total confusion, its actually pretty easy!
EDIT: added the photo (2 attempts!), closed a bracket, and fixed two insignificant typo's
Not difficult and actually rather good.
I'll be doing another soon.
Here's what I did
A small (745g inc skin) rolled and tied, boneless pork leg joint, actually free range Hampshire, from Waitrose.
I found a tallish (deep) bowl that would contain the joint and in which it could be fully submerged by a fairly small quantity of brine.
Weighing the joint, minus a little juice in the packet, recorded 736g on my scales.
I put the joint in the bowl and filled it up with water, to discover the quantity of brine needed. It was conveniently pretty close to 1 litre.
I went along with the general consensus of using a brine of about 120g/l salt. Because I wanted it to be, if anything, slightly sweet rather than salty, I actually used 100g of salt, and about 100g of sugar (80g granulated and two spoonfuls of honey).
To that I added 3 fresh bay leaves and about half a dozen dried juniper berries.
And 2g of saltpetre. (Even though the convention is 6g/litre, I've decided I'd actually use slightly less next time. See later.)
I warmed the brine and stirred to get everything to dissolve, and then cooled it. Meanwhile the pork was left to warm itself up towards room temperature. Using saltpetre, one depends on the bacterial flora for the saltpetre aspect of the cure to work, so since I was going to be dosing it with lots of salt and saltpetre, I was quite happy to let all the flora develop a little before starting to deal with the bad guys.
With brine and meat both close to room temp, the meat went into the brine with a clean saucer on top to sink it. The top of the bowl was sealed with cling film and it was put on the top shelf of a fridge - where the temperature was known (from measurement) to be in the neighbourhood of 6C.
The idea was to do an "equilibrium cure" where the meat takes up all the water, saltpetre, salt and sugar that it cares to. For this the timing isn't critical. It just has to be long enough. I judged a week about the minimum at 6C for my joint. I think it could go for a couple of months without a problem.
I gave it two weeks. During that time it was actually completely ignored. I think it should have been stirred a couple of times, but no harm came of ignoring it.
After two weeks, the joint was removed from the brine and weighed - it registered 800g. Thus the weight "pickup" from the brine was 8.8%
The meat exterior was a rather white colour, like boiled pork, and with only the merest trace of pink.
I found my largest pan, and estimate its full capacity as about 7 litres.
I moved the empty pan to the cooker.
The joint was put in the pan and the pan was filled with cold water.
The joint sank to the bottom.
A small china saucer was found and put under the joint to keep it out of contact with the potentially rather hot base of the pan. The joint was still fully submerged.
A digital probe thermometer was inserted into the centre of the meat, and, using clothes pegs, a dial type meat thermometer was clipped in place to measure the water temperature.
Heat was applied at a moderate rate - much less than the ring could supply. As the water slowly warmed it was frequently stirred, not least to even out the temperature.
With the water at 60C (and the meat core in the low 30's), it was decided to taste it for saltiness, to see if the water needed to be changed to flush out excess salt from the meat.
It tasted very bland indeed.
There being no need to change the water, I added 1 and 1/2 roughly chopped carrots, half a white onion studded with 6 elderly cloves and a bouquet garni.
Once the water temperature reached the mid 70'sC, I began to turn down the heat, and the maximum water temperature was in low 80's. (The frequency of stirring of the water to equalise temperature was maintained throughout.)
From the point of starting to turn the burner down, it was only about 20 minutes until the meat temperature reached 64C, and I carefully moved the pan off the heat.
However the meat temperature continued to rise, peaking at 73C, slightly higher than I had intended.
Once the meat temperature had fallen to the mid 30'sC, the probe was removed and the meat was transferred to a small pan. The veg and herbs were put in with the meat, and the pan was filled with a little of the poaching broth.
A saucer, tin can, and 1 litre fruitjuice tetrapak were then used to apply about 2kg weight to the meat as it was set to chill in the fridge.
The following day, it was discovered that the meat, still rather pallid and grey, was set into clear jelly.
The meat was removed from the pan, the skin carved away and a sample slice immediately cut.
I really didn't want to mess around with glazes or even decorative breadcrumbs. I wanted to see and taste what I'd made!
It was beautiful pink ham inside!
The colour actually appeared more even than the photo suggests...
The texture was firm, without being chewy. The meat was moist, not at all dry, and yet not "wet". And there was the jelly for a little juice.
It had a splendid ham taste. Not at all salty, not discernibly sweet, and with just a light herbal note from the bay leaves and bouquet garni. I couldn't isolate the taste of juniper or cloves, but I think that they contributed to the overall rather pleasant flavour.
It was actually damn good. Way, way better than any reasonable expectation for a first attempt. Frankly, I wasn't surprised, I was utterly astonished.
If I'm going to be super-critical, (and I tend to be, especially of myself), then I'd say that the only problem was a slightly too noticeable 'tang' from the nitrate. I'm certain I've tasted a stronger 'tang' in some commercial hams.
Anyway, next time, I intend to reduce the nitrate by perhaps 1/3, and see what happens.
Anyway, here's a rough calculation, following the equilibrium method from the FDA meat inspector's calculation handbook.
http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1906 (but please note my warning about their strange idea of "percentages".)
The brine was about 1200g, lets call it 1250.
The meat was 735g, lets call it 750.
So 3/8 (750/2000) of the total was meat.
Hence, at equilibrium, 3/8 of the original 2g of potassium nitrate would be in the meat
ie 6/8 (0.75) of a gram.
Against 750g meat that is 1/1000 th of the meat weight.
Which is 1000ppm (potassium) nitrAte "ingoing" against the FDA limit of 700ppm ingoing in immersion cured (non-bacon) meat for US sale. (Note that the limit is just 200ppm for ingoing nitrIte.)
Remembering that their limit is calculated for *sodium* nitrate, and that I used potassium, there's a 20% adjustment that the FDA don't bother with for simplicity, so I don't think my 1000 against an adjusted limit of 940 was actually anywhere near dangerous.
But I do actually think it would have been (even) better with less. Even if the "standard" brine advised on this site is 6g/litre saltpetre and dear Mrs Grigson advises more than double that (2oz/gallon), next time I'll be trying about 1.3g/litre...
If I had used 1/3 less saltpetre, with the same meat and quantity of brine, I'd have hit 667 ppm.
I'll take more careful aim next time.
But I think I may have to buy a set of drug dealer's scales to weigh out such tiny quantities accurately...
I reckon that my equilibrium salt content of the meat would have been about 5%, but doing the simmering in water that was 10x the weight of meat, left it perhaps slightly lower than the 2% salt found in a typical commercial ham. Anyway, the final salt level was just fine for me.
I offer the above in the hope that it may be helpful to others contemplating having a go.
I'd strongly recommend that you give it a try.
Once you get past the stage of total confusion, its actually pretty easy!
EDIT: added the photo (2 attempts!), closed a bracket, and fixed two insignificant typo's
