First time ham cure/cook questions

[Vernon Smith]

Hi Dougal,
Weight after injecting 7.1kg. Weight after brine 6.75 kg Weight after smoking 6.3kg. Nothing unusual! BUT I didn't think of weighing after cooking.

Cooked fully submerged with a large stone on top. Yes, my smoking is fairly intense but temperatures don't go much over 45 deg. Ambient here is 33 to 35 deg daytime.

I still think the cooking times are way over the top. Next time I will try Wohoki's slow increase in temperature until the middle reaches mid 70's then turn off the heat and let it cool. I was lucky enough to find a spike thermometer last Friday so I can give it a try. I think most commercial ham would be considered underdone if it were any other type of meat.

I've tried your suggestion of poaching as a salvage measure. Not bad at all provided care is taken to avoid disintegration. At least it becomes edible.

I think I will try some unsmoked ham next time around or at least reduce the intensity of the smoking that tends to make the rind extremely tough. Maybe that is significant. The rind was too tough to eat even after 3.3/4 hours at 85 deg. Parson suggested coconut husks for a sweet smoke. Sounds promising and certainly less intense.

Anyway thanks for all your pointers. I hope for better results next time.

[Wohoki]

Hello Vernon, sorry to hear about your problems. I would recommend the spike thermometer as being a usefull piece of kit to have anyway, damn near essential if you ever intend to do any hot smoking (try a chicken, my kids will eat it by the ton). I was also going to mention the chefy trick of using a metal skewer inserted to the middle of the meat and then touched (quickly!) to your lip. If it feels too hot for comfort then the meat is done: it's how I check chicken and pork roasts and no-one has died yet.

As to the saltiness: did you taste the cooking liquor while it was cooking? If the liquor is un-palatably salty then it should be changed (a handy hint is to measure the volume of water you add at the start and get a second pan filled with this ammount of water up to a good simmer, drain the ham and then pour over the fresh water. It doesn't interupt the cooking at all).

Uses for your oversalty ham: I'd recommend it shredded and fried crispy to use as a flavouring in fried rice and noodles. Use it as a seasoning rather than a meat, they sell it in Chinese stores and it's very good. Try some sprinkled over steamed greens with a squeeze of lime and some chilli flakes.

And Dougal, it is perfectly possible to over-boil meat and leave it dry as a bone. When meat is cooked the protein fibres contract and force any moisture out of the meat. If the meat is over-cooked there is limited moisture left in the meat, so there is nothing for the fibres to re-absorb, leaving you with a piece of meat with the tongue-feel of a wad of toilet paper. Cheaper cuts of meat contain a lot of collagen, which breaks down and lubricates the meat, but lean muscle doesn't contain enough conective tissue to do this and ends up dry. This is why stews made with good quality cuts are only ever cooked for a short time (eg. Stroganoff), but cuts like shin of beef and skirt can be cooked for hours without ruining them (eg. daube). It is also one of the reasons why braises and stews improve if they are cooked the day before they are eaten: a lot of the stock is re-absorbed if the meat is allowed to rest in the cooled stew liquor .

[tristar]

Parson suggested coconut husks for a sweet smoke.

Hi Vernon,

If you want to use coconut husks, I would suggest that you experiment on something smaller first. A couple of weeks ago I hot smoked some "Foot Longs" and some "Polish Ring" sausages, and yes there was a sweetness to the smoke but it was also very intense, almost sharply flavoured, difficult to explain, but may not be to everybodies taste. My coconut husks were from a green coconut so that may explain the difference, but they were dried before use!

Regards,
Richard

P.S. Thanks for the information about your smoker by the way, I never got around to thanking you when you sent it! But it was much appreciated.

[dougal]

And Dougal, it is perfectly possible to over-boil meat and leave it dry as a bone. ... Cheaper cuts of meat contain a lot of collagen, which breaks down and lubricates the meat ...

Tough, I'll accept, of course. 'Stringy' even. Over-boil I'll accept.
But "bone dry" - by *poaching*, fully immersed, without the water temperature ever exceeding 85C??? And then cooling off still fully immersed.
Hmmm....

BUT - I wonder...
Vernon speaks of weighting his ham during poaching with a "large stone". As such, it would be in direct (intimate) contact with the base of his pan, and like that, I just wonder if it might be subject to rather higher temperatures...
When cooking using an improvised double boiler/bain mairie - for example when melting chocolate - if the inner pan touches the bottom of the outer one, the temperature can soar way beyond the typical temperature of the water bath - burning the chocolate.
So, if the ham is being pressed onto the base of the pan, I think its possible that the 'poaching' may have been more intense than Vernon realised. And we know from roasting that bone-in meat roasts faster than boned, and that is illustrating how well the bone conducts heat through the meat.
Is it possible that the stone is to blame?
(Mrs Grigson speaks of a boiled piece of wood to keep the meat submerged, from which I infer that the ham is *floating* beneath the floating wood.)
My guess would be that the ham could have had a fair cooking, pressed onto the base of the pan, even while the bulk of the water was coming up to temperature - the more so the greater the difference between Vernon's heat inputs for 'heating up' and 'simmering' (ie how much he was able to 'turn it down' once the 85C had been reached).


Vernon has hopped about across many threads with this project. In one, I did pass on others of Mrs Grigson's tips
1/ about re-starting with fresh poaching water if it (the water) tasted "excessively salty"
2/ chucking a trotter into the poaching water (providing a collagen source) to give a more 'jellied' result


What's the general feeling about smoking for 4 days at 45C?
And in "intense" smoke.
That seems rather high to me for 'cold' smoking, and a bit cool and long for either 'hot' smoking or US "BBQ" steam and smoke roasting.
I note that Heston Blumenthal's infamous roast beef is "cooked" for 20 hours at 55C
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/datab ... 4821.shtml
My understanding was that the smoke would be better thinner, cooler (I know about the climate) and longer. The question not being *how* to get the smoke cooler, but if it *needs* to be cooler.
I note that the smoking process is said to have seriously toughened the rind. My suspicion is that it could have had the same effect on the internals.


Weights. I'm a bit surprised that the weight gain after injecting and 28 days curing would end up being less than 4%. (Vernon spoke elsewhere of a 6.5kg start weight.) I don't know what it might mean, but it does seem strange, given the oft-quoted figure of 8-10%.
And nearly 7% loss seems a little high for 4 days of smoking of a ham. I'm thinking that a ham has less surface in proportion to its volume than a slab of bacon or a sausage.
I'm slightly surprised that after injecting, 28 days soaking in cure, and 4 days smoking, that there should be an overall 3% weight loss.

What do the experienced heads think of those weights?

[Wohoki]

Hi Dougal, try this: put a chicken breast in water at 75C for an hour and a half then eat it. Dry as cotton wool. It depends on the fat and collagen content of the lean flesh, and pork leg meat is surprisingly low in both.

[dougal]

The ham cooking chart is posted by Parson Snows..

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=396&highlight=cooking

Regards, Paul Kribs

As noted in the legend on the graph, the section above 10 lb is taken from a MAFF document, the same one referenced by Jane Grigson in her "Charcuterie".

I'm a little surprised that Wohoki, in what seems like eagerness to 'correct' me at every opportunity, should take issue with such an established reference.

I have noted, on the thread which Paul linked, that Parson Snow's graph appears to have been miscalculated, particularly between 5 and 10 lb, - although this does not affect the timing advised for Vernon's 6.5 kg ham.

The precise 'simmering' temperature would seem to be quite important. Nowadays, not least for sous vide cooking, it would be specified very precisely - Alain Ducasse cooks pigeon (a somewhat dry meat) for *36* hours at 62C (+/- 1C), but in the MAFF days, (Jane Grigson's book was first published in 1966), the instruction was simply to bring slowly to the boil and then "simmer".

To correct an important inaccuracy of my own - Mrs Grigson used a piece of "boiled wood" to keep her meat submerged during *curing*, not cooking whole hams.
For cooking a whole ham, I find she speaks of "suspending" it in the water "so that the more quickly cooked knuckle end is out of the water".

I am becoming convinced that pressing the ham against the base of the pan with a "large stone" during *cooking* was one of the problems Vernon suffered. I think it should not be in any contact with the pan - just the water/broth.
Note that this is completely distinct from any question of *pressing* the ham *after* cooking.

And as an addition, to what I suggested for rescuing Vernon's ham, when I suggested treating it as Gammon and serving it warm - I should have added "with a sauce, a creamy parsley sauce being one traditional accompaniment."

[Wohoki]

Hi Dougal, my reference, other than a fair amount of cooking experience, is "McGee on Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee, which is the definitive text on why ingredients behave as they do when cooked. Heston Blumenthal cites it as the book that changed him from being a good cook to being the man he is today.
Poaching meat gives the cook greater lee-way over the degree of "done-ness" of the meat, but it is still possible to over-cook. Vernon has a gut-feeling that his ham was over-cooked and all I wanted to state was that he could well be right, as the condition of the product as described fits my experience of overdone ham. Of course it's possible to over-cook and render food dry by cooking in water: ever answered the phone while you were trying to soft-boil eggs?
And I'm not correcting you, I'm disagreeing with you. Is this a discussion board or a text book?

[dougal]

Wohoki - Of course I'm familiar with McGee's work, although since it covers some topics from a purely american angle and others, necessarily even in a book that size, superficially or not at all, I do think it should be read, at least, in conjunction with other works.

That entirely aside, the point that you are disputing is whether poaching a 6.5 kg ham for 3 and 3/4 hours, with a water temperature never exceeding 85C, constitutes overcooking - to the extent that Vernon complained of - inedibly dry.

You just insist that it *is* possible to overcook chicken and hard-boil eggs.
Frankly, I fail to see how that advances the discussion.

The conventional established wisdom is that 3 and 3/4 hours is an appropriate time to simmer a 6.5 kg ham.
You seem to be disputing that.

I have identified HOW it would be possible that Vernon could have overcooked it, EVEN THOUGH he kept the water below 85C. And I have suggested how this might be countered.
(My suspicion is that 4 days of intense smoking at 45C might be somewhat wide of the mark too, but that is offered as no more than the opinion of a well-read newbie.)

On the other hand, your comments seem limited to telling *me* that it is really and truly possible to overboil meat if you give it long enough.
I'm trying to learn from Vernon's experience and see if I can help him towards a better result next time. Can we both do that?

...a 6.5kg leg from a friend and put that into cure after injecting with 650ml cure (65 shots of 10ml because I haven't a larger syringe). I used a basic cure with 3% KNO3. ...

I take this to mean 30gm/litre of saltpetre.
Isn't that a bit high?
I note that Oddley's Wiltshire cure uses just 2gm saltpetre for a 6.5 kg ham, and his "English brine" uses 6gm/litre of saltpetre. Mrs Grigson's brine-cured and smoked (but uncooked) ham uses 1 teaspoon saltpetre to 5 and 1/4 pints (thats 3 litres) of water - again around 5gm/litre. (Though her 'English brine' is 2oz saltpetre in 5 pints water - around 20 gm/litre.)
It looks like Vernon might have 5 or 6 times too much saltpetre...
One of the effects attributed to Saltpetre is toughening meat. Might this be part of the problem, as well?

Incidentally, in that recipe "Jambon de Campagne Fum�", Mrs Grigson expains what might be a useful butchery technique.
She takes the leg out of the brine after 3 days and presses it between pieces of 'boiled wood' to remove the last traces of remaining blood.
For the "Jambon de Bayonne" she speaks of hanging the leg and beating it with a piece of clean wood - "one of those old-fashioned butter pats are excellent for this. This brings out a certain amount of blood, and also smooths out the wrinkles in the skin." She then specifies that it be hung by the knuckle "for three to five days... you will find that a pinkish liquid runs out, mop it up twice a day at least" - and for the Bayonne this is *before* the first application of any salt.
"If you are buying the leg straight from the butcher, tell him what you want it for. You will probably not have to go through the above performance."

Anybody heard mention of this procedure before? Or done it?
Sounds like it might be useful to those who have had whole legs 'go off'...

[Wohoki]

Och, I can't be bothered. Dougal, I am sorry if I put you out of joint, it wasn't my intention.

Vernon, whether I was any help or not, Godsspeed and good luck next time. Practice may not make perfect, but you can get close sometimes

[Oddley]

Interesting discussion with no clear outcome.

I think it was a combination of the cooking, cure and the smoking. The first thing that strikes me that I wasn't told or didn't see that the meat was going to be pumped. If that was the case I would have suggested it stay no more that about a week in brine.

I don't know if you remember the calcs that were done on another thread, I don't think that was the whole story.

EDIT: Due to recently discovered information, this recipe is to be used at 10% pump only This is not an immersion cure

2500 gm Water
354.84 gm salt
354.84 gm sugar
16.13 gm KN03

Total brine weight 3225.81 gm

brine exhaust weight of meat at 10% pickup 32,258.30 gm

Total Meat and brine weight 35,484.11

We can work out the salt percentage of the total meat and brine weight.

Salt% = 354.84 * 100 / 35,484.11 = 0.999 % Or rounded up 1%

6000g water
1000g salt
1000g sugar
40g KnO3
=======
8040g total

10% uptake to exhaustion = 80400g meat so meat plus brine = 88440g

Salt = 1000 X 100 / 88440 = 1.1307%

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopi ... c&start=15

Let me refresh your memory about osmosis. Osmosis is a process of the cell absorbing salt by osmotic pressure in an effort to reach equalisation with the surrounding brine, this is not at first achieved as the cell's absorb the salt they release water, they then become too salty and reverse osmosis takes place, where the cells redress the balance by absorbing water and with this water the other soluble ingredients in the brine. Nowhere have I said that the meat will increase in weight, so with a pickup not a pump, it is more likely that an exchange of liquid/ingredients takes place, and because I think more weight in water will be lost than is replaced by salt etc. The meat will weigh less than it's green weight.

You will notice I say the cells will reach equalisation with the surrounding brine, and not and not some 8-10% that is absorbed. This means that the calculation for vernon's 6.5 kg should look like the following.

6000g water
1000g salt
1000g sugar
40g KnO3
=======
8040g total

Total Brine and meat weight = 8040 + 6500 = 14540gm

Salt = 1000 X 100 / 14540 = 6.88 %

Salt pickup in meat = 447.2 gm

final salt % of meat after smoking = 447.2* 100/ 6300 = 7.1%

7.1% is quite salty, and with a long smoking making the meat crusty and resistant to the absorption of water and the release of salt there wouldn't be much change.

The answer too this, is first of all use a container that is quite a tight fit, for the meat being cured, this will allow a designer brine to be made for the size of meat, so that a small amount of brine can be used. If you study the calc you will see the less brine you use the less salt absorbed. Being careful not to go below the minimum brine to cure that piece of meat.

As this is quite complex to understand at a low level, If you don't agree I would like to hear your reasoning.

[Paul Kribs]

Took my 5 kg ham out of the Wiltshire brine today and cooked it for 3 hours 40 minutes. Added 4 small onions studded with cloves, 6 bay leaves, 1 tablespoon juniper berries, 1 heaped teaspoon black peppercorns and a bunch of parsley stalks to the water. Brought up to a simmer and covered with foil. Left it to cool abit (1/2 hour) before removing it to a plate. Had to taste a bit so pulled some out from next to the bone.. put most of it back for a photo. Absolutely spot on. I would like to express my thanks to Oddley for his brine calculation, I will definitely be using it again. The treacle really comes through nicely and salt is just right.



Need to let it cool overnight in the fridge and vacuum pack it whole for the weekend.

Regards, Paul Kribs

[aris]

By looking at the colour, I take it you roasted that and didn't boil it?

Aris

[Paul Kribs]

No, It was not roasted, it was simmered and left 'as is', skin on as well. The 'black' is due to the treacle. It's not burnt at all, soft and succulent. Let the wife have a little taste, and got the thumbs up.

Regards, Paul Kribs

[Oddley]

You are welcome Paul.

[aris]

One technique I have seen for boiling hams, is to simmer for the requisite time, and then turning the heat off and leaving it to steep in the cooking liquor overnight. Anyone tried this?