Hamming it Up

3/25/08 - 3rd Day - After Breakfast. Ok, so the ribs last night were magniful and beautificent and a whole bunch of other made up words that describe the quintessence of yummihood. The children, smiling with barbecue sauce all over them, pronounced their wonder at the thought that less than 12 hours earlier their supper had been oinking down at the pig pens. I merely grunted between bites and tried not to wipe my hands and mouth on my sleeve.

last evening, I started the curing process on the hams. I am planning on mixing about 3 different preservation methods to really get a long term cure so I can hang the hams in the root cellar for long term storage. I have read many different methods and ideas about long term storage, so I finally just came up with a way that I hope will work using what we have available and some old tried and true methods. I started with a salt/sugar cure. I will leave the hams in this cure for only a few days to a week, then I will go to a second cure for two to four weeks. Then I will try to cold smoke the hams some, before coating them with honey, wrapping them, and storing them for 12 months to a year. One of the hams will probably be consumed at 6 months just to see how it is all going. I should have two more large hams starting the same process in a few weeks. Here was my cure recipe for the first cure:

2 gallons of water
1.5 lbs of brown sugar
2 cups of honey powder
2 lbs of pickling/canning salt
2 garlic cloves
Pepper
Clove

I submerged the hams in the cure by placing them in a plastic bucket. I then placed the bucket into our large chest freezer. This freezer will not be allowed to freeze (we will try to keep it in the high 30's and 40's) during the process, though I am not sure the hams would freeze anyway with the salt content in the water. After some undecided amount of time passes, I plan on doing a second similar cure by pouring off the first liquid and doing it again, only this time I will add saltpeter, and I will inject some of the cure into the ham all the way to the bones. This second cure will go for several weeks. Then I will likely do a salt cure rub (dry cure) for a few weeks, before coating the whole hams in honey, wrapping them, and hanging them in the root cellar.

This morning, Danielle has already started on cubing and canning the two big pork roasts, so we ought to be mostly finished processing this pig by late today. The only work we will have left is for the ladies to make the lard, and for me to make some sausage from the stuff we saved for sausage.

At least 1 and maybe 2 of our pigs will go to the professional butcher on April 9, so we should be set up (if the Lord wills) for pork for 7 to 8 months which will be in time to contemplate butchering again.

Thanks for tuning in.

Michael Bunker