Home-Cured Ham holiday - First You Brine, then you Brag

Home-Cured Ham holiday - First You Brine, then you Brag -

There are several reasons to make your own holiday ham, but best of all, perhaps the most superficial. After the holidays because people are standing around the water cooler bragging how their glazed carrots were, or how incredible cranberry sauce is out, you can say, "That sounds good, but no one else will heal their own ham? I do not think so. "

Above and beyond establish your domination cooking with friends, other reasons are pretty good too, you can flavor your ham as desired;. you can control somewhat the salt content; and the number of people you need to feed, can cure all reducing the size of the pork you want, from a whole leg in a small loin roast.

There are thousands of different combinations of brine and spices, but the procedure is pretty much the same no matter how you go. However, there is one thing all these recipes have in common pink salt. To make a real ham, you will need a curing salt that contains sodium nitrite, which is what gives the meat its pink color, and the signature "ham" taste to something that tastes like roast pork.

This magic ingredient goes by several names, including salt cured Rose # Insta Cure # 1, or the one I used, Prague Powder # 1 Yes, you can theoretically use things like celery juice, but long story short, nitrites are nitrites, and does not matter where they come from. For more information about this, and potential health problems, this article by Michael Ruhlman is a good read.

Once the ham is cured, you'll want give it a soak to rinse the brine, and how long you do this can affect how your meat is salted. I prefer just a quick dunk, but you can leave it for as long as 24 hours, which will produce what I call a low sodium ham. It is still pink, and tasty but salty sentence. Experimentation is the only way to know how long you should go, but I wanted to give you the range.

If you want a healed house ham adorning your table Christmas, I gave you just enough time to do it. A local butcher should be happy to give you a few tablespoons of pink salt, otherwise it is very easy to find online. Whether for a holiday dinner or not, I really hope you give this a try. Have fun!

Ingredients:

7-10 expense books, "picnic" roast arm bone pork shoulder (or other large piece of pork)

for brine (adapted from ham basic brine recipe Ruhlman)

6 liters of water

18 oz kosher salt (which is about 2 1/4 cups kosher salt Morton, or 3 2/3 cups kosher diamond crystal salt, because they have difference in grain size)

2 brown sugar cups

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon salt pink # 1

1 rounded c pickling spices or spice you want

F or the al glaze:
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 syrup cup of maple
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch of salt

- once healed, you should smoke and / or your roast ham until it reaches an internal temperature of at least 145 -150 F.

- for a more detailed video on how I Prep a ham to the oven, watch this video crispy honey glazed ham .