Meat – Wet Cooked Ham Slices

If it is a country ham, meaning salt-cured then you need to boil the salt out of it. I may get flamed for this, but that article is not how I process my ham. So here is what I do.

I get a lard tin, I usually have to cut off the hock to make the ham fit but since yours is split you may not have to. If it is not a salt cured ham, and is a city ham it may not be fit to eat if you do this, you could make ham soup maybe.

Anyway put the ham in the tin fill it full of water bring it up to a boil let it boil for about fifteen minutes then bring the heat down to medium-low for about 1/2 an hour then let it cool down enough so you can take it off the stove, but just barely cool enough. While it is cooling down get blankets and spread them out on the floor, one or two thin ones should do, then get some newspaper and spread that in the middle of the blankets put the tin in the middle of the newspaper and wrap the tin with the newspaper then wrap the blankets around it and then push it over into a corner overnight.

The next morning pull the ham out of the water give it a rinse and pat it dry, it will still be warm-to-hot. (I rotisserie ham hocks and small hams I get from my butcher but I have never done a full size ham I would imagine the amount of drippings would make a mess though.) Next I get my big roasting pan put the ham in it and pat it down with brown sugar, medium or dark is up to you. Then I cover it with aluminum foil, making sure I tent the foil so it doesn't touch the ham, and let it cook usually between four and five hours for a good size ham at about 325. The last half hour I take off the aluminum foil and if I feel it is necessary I add more brown sugar and let it caramelize.

I have been cooking ham this way for as long as I have been cooking and the process is passed down from my mother and her father before her. Farther back than that I cannot confirm or deny. :)

Here is a great article on country hams and other hams, just to make sure you do have a country ham, and gives other great suggestions on how to cook a ham, although they do it differently than I do.

http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/zen_of_ham.html

There is a lot of ambiguous and misused terminology in cooking... added to that, different countries have specific legal definitions for foodstuffs that vary from one jurisdiction to another.

Gammon vs. Ham

Some sources call it gammon if it is raw, while others claim gammon differs from ham because it is cured with the belly and then detached, whereas hams are detached from the rest of the animal and then cured (a nearly useless distinction); also the words gammon, ham and bacon are sometimes used interchangeably. In the US we call it ham when it is cured, whether it is cooked or raw; and we call it fresh ham if it is uncured (We pretty much call anything from the hind leg of a pig ham).

Fresh vs. Raw vs. Cooked

Raw does not mean that no processing has been performed, it just means that it hasn't been cooked or the proteins haven't been denatured chemically. Curing, smoking, marinating, freezing, and drying, and milling can all be performed without cooking.

Generally, "Fresh" means no processing has been performed. In the US and UK, the term "fresh frozen" has gained a foothold more as a marketing term than actually providing useful information.

There are a number of cured hams that are eaten raw and are safe. For example prosciutto, jamón ibérico, jamón serrano, and some country hams in the US. Most of these are dry cured and may or may not be smoked.

Types of smoking.

The more commonly known type, and what most people call "smoking", is actually hot smoking. Hot smoking is what happens when the item being smoked is kept in a smoker at a temperature high enough to cook the item, usually in the 225-250˚F/105-120˚C range.

The other type of smoking is cold smoking. During cold smoking the smoker or smoking chamber does not get hot enough to cook the item being smoked, usually 100˚F/38˚C or lower. This type of smoking used to be much more common as an added protection and flavor for cured foods as well as food that are more delicate. These include gammon/hams, fish, cheeses, bacon, and seafood. Just as many foods that were previously dry cured are now wet cured, many of these products are now produced industrially using "wet smoking" or smoke flavor additives instead of cold smoking methods.

As with cold-smoked meats, some "wet smoking" yields a product that is technically raw, because its proteins have not been denatured by heat. Instead, liquid smoke or smoke flavor is added to the brine or applied as a coating before cooking.

Cold smoking has had a bit of a resurgence lately with the invention of smoke guns, which allow you to add smoke without the need of a large cold smoker.