The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Food processing => Topic started by: Sudanpan on June 07, 2012, 02:47:47 pm
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I have posted earlier on our 1st foray into the air drying hams experiment - and we are enjoying the results very much :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
So, this year we are doing it slightly differently - namely we are leaving the bone in this time.
We were also wondering about the step of wrapping the hams once they have had their salting session (they've been in for 6 days so far, another 15 days to go)
Last year we used the stockingette stuff so got a very tightly fitting covering onto the hams. These covers got pretty manky during the hanging period (8 months-ish) with the mould growth on them and everything had to be peeled off once we came to taking the ham down from the rafters.
We were wondering about not wrapping the hams at all this time when we hang them, but basically hang them in the rafters in a fly free cage made from fine net curtains - is this a realistic proposition?
Thanks
Tish
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Ours spend their six months of hanging in a white cotton pillow case. Do have the bone taken out, though - the bone doesn't add flavour to air dried ham but it does make slicing so much more difficult.
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most people take out the bone to have less risk of things going wrong (bugs etc)
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We went with the bone-out for our first time, but decided to give the bone-in a go this time round. We know that it is more risky but figured we'd give it a go anyway. Its too late to change now as the legs are already in the salt.
We'll give the net curtain meat cage a go and report back ;D
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Don't worry, bone out is not more risky, it's less risky because you don't have that big gap where the bone was removed and bacteria can get in. Of course you need to make sure the salt goes all the way down into the gap, but that's just a bit more fiddly the one time you're salting it, a boneless ham is much easier to slice all those many times afterwards. ;)
I was just thinking, as it's your first ham, maybe you're slicing by hand? In which case, slicing convenience would make less of a difference because you can't really slice large slice so thinly by hand, they always tend to be smaller bits - or perhaps that's just us :D . The very first leg we air cured was literally a whole leg, it went from top-of-backside to trotter (we're not doing that again ::) ).
We use a professional slicer to get wafer thin big-ish slices which (the thinner the ham, the better it tastes) - these machines are fantastic, now there's something to try and find on ebay, especially if you also make bacon! :thumbsup:
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Took the hams out of the salt today - rinsed in cold water and then doused with white wine vinegar. We got some butcher 'S' hooks and the hams have been hung in our homemade meatsafe.
Now to wait until July 2013
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Looks excellent, that meatsafe! :thumbsup:
6 months waiting is enough, you could even cut a bit off after 4 months and cover the rest back up again - you'll notice the difference in taste a few months later.
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WOW!!! Impressive.
Where do you get such a quantity of salt from?
We are planning to have a go at bone out this time. last time we did a wet cure bone in and, although it was delicious, it was a bugger to carve.
This time I'm going to do bone out wet cure and bone out dry cure.
I LOVE the cage. We have alot of net curtains for our apple pressing so they could be put to good use when they are not being used for the apples (one week a year!!)
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That is the biz Sudanpan, very envious :thumbsup:
Anyone got any recommendations for good but cheap meat slicers, is there such a thing ???
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No
We tried the cheap/eBay route and it leads nowhere.
We got a good one from Northern Tools which has worked a treat.
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Suziequeue - we got the salt from Bookers the wholesalers ;D If you use your net curtains for apple pressing and then for the meat safe it might give an airy appley hint to the hams :D
Eve - we left one of our hams from last year for 8 months before eating - and the other is still hanging so it might be a year before we eat that one!
As for the slicer - we went for a commercial one - I think it might be northern tools as well :)