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Those who find my 'Everyday' Ham a little too bland may like to try this recipe. I made it for Christmas and it went down a treat.

Pauline's Ham

Water 2810gm
Salt 680gm
Muscodavo Sugar 405gm
Cure #1 105gm
Juniper Berries 2
Cloves 2
Black Pepper Corns 4
Bay Leaves 1
Coriander seeds 4

Method

Weigh the spices then bash them about a bit. Put the water, salt, sugar and spices (in fact, everything except the Cure #1) into a pan and bring to the boil. Stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. Leave to cool.

Using water, make the weight back up to the original amount - that is the original weight of the water, salt, sugar and spices, added together. That's the total weight of everything except the Cure #1.

Mix the Cure #1 into the cooled brine mixture stirring to ensure that it is dissolved.

Weigh the meat and calculate 10% of its weight. Inject this weight of brine into the meat ensuring that you get brine into all areas of the meat.

Now put the meat into the remaining brine and put it in the fridge for around 5 - 7 days, turning the meat every day or two. My meat weighed 6kg so I gave it the full 7 days.

The meat was then rinsed, dried off, and left to dry further in the fridge overnight. You could smoke it at this stage if you wanted.

The other change I made was to the cooking method. I steamed this ham, keeping the temperature above the water to 80°C. The ham is cooked when the temperature of the centre of the meat reaches 75°C. I have found that this method results in less flavour loss and also less weight loss in the finished ham and that by cooking to 75°C, as against 72°C, it gives a more tender product. An alternative would be to cook it in a vacuum bag or boilable 'roasting' bag in water at 75 - 80°C.

(copied from my blog and named after my wife!)

Phil

Edited: to correct recipe

Does she know you have named a ham after her?

She does Mike - the full story's on the blog!

I must give that a go Phil. I have been doing your "everyday" ham, but the OH would prefer something more supermarket

I was amazed when I looked at the ingredients in 'shop ham' how few there were. It didn't seem to matter what 'flavour' of ham it was, they all had the same!

Wiltshire ham for example from Waitrose, just British Pork, Salt, Preservatives Sodium Nitrite and Potassium Nitrate.

The Ocadowebsite is great for checking these out, they have a 'What's Inside' tab on their product listings - you can generally work out the salt and sugar content from these. (salt is sodium x 2.5).

Phil

Oddley wrote:Hi wheels,

So, you are going to have about 3.3% salt residual, Thats about what I normally do, I'm thinking of upping it to about 4% salt next time, to give it more of a bite.

I have discovered, that if you have an ingoing of salt, at about 10-12%, when done, soak it for about 24 hours, the salt content is right, but has a very sweet taste. very pleasant.

Sorry, Oddley can you explain the 3.3%? At 10% pump I get it to just over 2% - or are you taking the soak in brine into account as well? I have to say that the taste is more of 2% than 3%.

Phil

Oddley

I cooked the ham 'over water' - sort of steamed but with the temp above the water at 80°C. I guess that there will be some salt loss but using this method it should be minimal.

Did you base your calculation on NCPaul's research? It would be interesting to see similar tests done on a large (this was 6kg) piece of meat cured this way. If FDA calculations are used 3.3% salt would be a combined pump/pick up of over 15%. I may try one with just a 10% pump and then vac-pac, rather than brine, for comparison (if it works OK it would also be cheaper!).

Phil

wheels wrote:If FDA calculations are used 3.3% salt would be a combined pump/pick up of over 15%.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you are still thinking that pickup necessarily means the water as well. In my opinion this is wrong, there will be an exchange of chemicals, with salt sugar nitrite exchanged for water, more or less keeping the pump/pickup the same % but with less water.

I wrote:6Kg meat
68.0387 % Water 2810gm
20.8959 % Salt 863gm
10.8959 % Muscodavo Sugar 450gm
Cure #1 120gm
0.1709 % Nitrite = 7.06gm


Total salt = 113 + 750 = 863gm
Total nitrite 7.06gm

Total Weight = 4130 gm

:.
10% Pump
10% of 6Kg meat = 600g
20.8959 % of 600g = 125gm salt
125gm salt as a percentage of the meat = 2.0 %

As you can see, with just the 10% pump you get 2.0% salt. I did a percentage to equilibrium calc to find that there would be a 1% pickup of salt in 7 days, therefore the total ingoing would be about 3.0% salt.

Yes, I don't think that FDA method calculation is adequately explained either. however I guess I have more confidence in it than you do. I don't dispute your calculations if the evidence of a piece of meat weighing 1kg can be extrapolated to cover a 6kg piece. I have also been concerned about the brine period in this type of curing for some time, although it is a standard practice and is required in certain products in the EU regulations whose scientific advice post-dates the US regs.

However all that said, the proof of the pudding as they say is in the eating. Tonight my whole family has tasted the ham alongside some dry cured bacon (2% salt), everyone of them says that the bacon is noticeably more salty. Both have the same level of sugar, so the only possible explanation is that the ham does not have a 3% salt content.

Phil

N.B. Original recipe edited to correct recipe (I'd originally shown my working figures for 3120gm water before I tidied up to make a 4 litre brine )

I see what you say Oddley and yes, it will contain 2% (less a bit of initial leakage) it's the extra 1% that our taste buds are saying isn't there. Your calculation of the 'pick-up of salt in the brine stage' seems to be based on the supposition that meat that's been injected with 10% of its weight in brine will behave in the same way, and absorb the same level of salt, as a piece of meat that has not been injected. I'm not sure that I can support that supposition.

Given that the dry cure bacon had 2% salt and the same % sugar as the ham, in theory if the ham does contain 3% salt it should have tasted more salty. Whether it has more salt or not according to calculation, or even for that matter testing, it actually tastes as if it has less than the bacon which has 2%.

I will inject the next one but not brine it. A side by side test will then tell us for sure. Short of testing like NCPaul did I don't see any other way of doing this. I want an answer though to be able to predict the level of nitrite in this type of cure with some degree of accuracy.

Phil

Very true Oddley - I know that from making Ice-cream you wouldn't believe how sweet it has to be before freezing. (well, you probably would because you've no doubt made it, but you get my gist!)

Phil