Air drying pork (Parma-style)

[si.hyde]

Hi All,

We recently sent our pigs to slaughter and have been thoroughly enjoying the fruits of our labour. Our first time for raising pigs has been a roaring success.

I think we may have error'ed slightly regarding our plan to cure two legs as Parma-style hams. The legs have been buried in salt for 33 days now and we are at the time where we need to bring them out and get them humg somewhere. And it is this little point that we hadn't quite thought through!
One thought was to build a weatherproof structure on the north facing side of our house (so no sun catches it at any time) and hang the two rather large legs in it. The problem we have is the current temperatue is floating around the 27 deg mark.
Another option is that a friendly butcher has offered for us to let them hang in his walk in fridge.
Another is to have them hang in our garage but again, the temperature in there has reached 24/25 at times recently.
So it seems we ar stuck between hanging them in a 1 deg fridge or in 20 ish deg garage or risk up to 27/28 in the side of the house. None of which seem to be options mentioned in any of the books .
If anybody has any suggestions/solutions they will be very gratefully received. As presently I'm thinking that we are going to have two legs of rotten pork which would be an absolute travesty!
Many thank you's in advance,

Simon

PS I've posted this on the River Cottage forum too - desperately hoping for as much help as we can possibly get! Thank you!

[Mohalk]

Welcome to the forum.

I think I would hang them in your friends walk in until you are able to get your structure built or at least partition part of your garage and use a portable AC unit and something to keep the RH where needed.

I just built a little shack in the back yard (north side of the house). Not yet 100% complete but functional.
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11005. I hope you are able to get an idea or so from this. Good luck with the hams!

Al

[NCPaul]

Welcome to the forum. I agree with Mohalk, go with the walk in until you can get the conditions you want. The ham will still be distributing the salt even if it doesn't dry much. The other options risk spoilage.

[Wunderdave]

What an ambitious first project! Hope it works out for you. Do you have a root cellar or similar in your basement?

[gundlrak]

Well my first time making a Prosciutto salt cured ham, step 1- I just picked my pork ham skin on from a local supplier it looks good after I got it home I placed it in its package it came in and placed ot in my spare refrigerator in our below grade garage so far so good, Now tomorrow I will trim the ham and remove the H Bone then salt the ham with sea salt after squeezing the blood traped in the arterys , after removing the H-Bone and pressing out the blood we will salt the ham and place it in the refrigerator for the required salting time the ham is 20 lbs . I will turn the ham every day or two drain of any liquid and add more salt as needed. Q. What is the refrigerator temp kept at for the 20 or 30 days as it is curing.
Q. I see some people are washing off excess salt and rinse with red or white wine then some people add black pepper all over the ham . They also take a mixture of lard and flour and cover the exposed area of said ham we process our own beef and pork and have made link sausage of all types and rind bologna summer sausage for many years we also make many types of wine well with a name like DeMarco and my family being from Italy I am a first generation Italian American it in our blood But now I want to make our favorite things like Lardo,Lonza,Panchetta,Salami,Capicola and last Soppressata . We purchased some of very popular book on the craft of Italian dry curing Salumi and at two kits from a company called UMAi dry curing different meats in your Refrigrator without any special equipment using there special supplied bags. We will let you know how they work. So I am looking for any help making a controlled environment to age the ham I do have a friend who has a walk in cooler I can use and I can control the temp and humidity during the drying process any information I'm sure will be helpful. Thank you. Gary DeMarco. Please e-mail me it's faster and post to this message. gundlrak(at)Hotmail.com again thanks.