[Hilarysmum]

Thank you thats a lovely thing to say.  After today's experience I need my confidence boosting.

[egglady]

Thank you thats a lovely thing to say.  After today's experience I need my confidence boosting.

ohn no that doesnt soind good - whats happened?

[Hilarysmum]

A little too much piggy help with the loading of the two for pork.

[Eve]

Thankyou so much, egglady, very kind of you!
But I'm a in the total beginner category for quite a few others things!   

Have fun with the hams and bacon, and if anyone knows a way to get a pepper crust around salami (one that you don't take off when you remove the casings when slicing) please enlighten me! 

[egglady]

For air dried hams, buy a few kilo's of salt - we use ordinary Saxo or Waitrose's own brand. Put a thick coating all over - you need 2 people for that, one to lift the leg up in all sorts of ways whilst the other empties tub after tub of salt all into every nook and cranny. Curing takes 1 day (or more) for each 1/2kg of meat, so easily 2 weeks for a whole leg. If it's still squashy, keep on curing it until firm enough and no more moisture leaches out.
If you put the box that houses the meat at an angle, the juices run into a corner rather than staying underneath the meat - we just put one side of the box on hubby's big boots, they give the perfect angle! 

Once it's cured, you rinse off all the salt, pat the whole thing dry, and leave it to air dry. For this actual air drying, there are 2 options:
1) put it in muslin and let it dry for 6+ months somewhere cool, in which case there will be harmless dry mould growing all over it, which stays on there until you scrape some off when you want to eat a bit of ham
2) put pork fat all over the exposed meat (in which case you won't get the mould covering), then pepper on the fat (to keep bugs off) and again in a muslin ('cause a leg covered in cloth is easier to handle than one covered in lard, and we're paranoid).
The fat stops the skin from drying out and hardening - if the skin dries out, the moisture from inside can't escape anymore and the meat will rot inside.
We used whole pepper but I suppose ground pepper would have been more economical. 
As for the muslin / cheese cloth: cheap white cotton pillow cases from the supermarket are the perfect size.
Tie some string around the trotter bit where the meat hook is inserted so that nothing can go inside the pillow case (spiders in the loft!  ). The meat hook came from our butcher, and the ham was hanging from an old clothing rail. 

Last year we used a whole 8kg leg which took a few weeks to cure. We've used smaller pieces of meat since, but we'll try a whole leg again next time. Only, the next whole leg will be without the bone still in there at the top, as we don't have one of those special wooden holders to set it into for easy slicing (as they have in the deli's). After 5 months or so we tasted it, and ended up taking the whole thing apart in large pieces because of the slicing issue, with some eaten straight away and the rest put back to continue drying. The flavour changes between months 5 and 10+.

As for the weight that needs to go on top of the meat to push the juices out during curing, we didn't have enough tins! Plus it was the biggest plastic box we could buy but still not quite big enough, so the leg was sitting at an angle and the tins rolled off.
 

Eve/Hilarysmum, i have no idea what part we are now curing as the label fell off but it is nearly 3 kg. has a lot of fat on it so although we thought it was a leg, i'm now thinking that it is maybe back or belly!  can we still make it into air dried ham? or might it be aleg with the bone taken out?

[Eve]

i have no idea what part we are now curing as the label fell off

What shape is it, round or flat and square-ish? Have you got a picture?

[egglady]

the butcher had it rolled up and tied so cant really say for sure.  we've untied it but not really sure what shape it is.  can take photo tomorrow

[Hilarysmum]

Ah the difficulty if its flat when laid out its either loin or belly.  Does it have teats or was it skinned?  If teats its belly.

If the butcher tunnel boned the leg then it will not flatten out when untied.  Same with shoulder.  Either of w hich make great ham.  Never used belly or loin as ham only as bacon.  I would imagine it would be ok, just a different shape?

[Eve]

... difference between hot -v- cold smoking ... when you would use which one

We found the answer... big cured slab of bacon ready in the fridge but no barbeque coals left, so hubby drives around petrol stations and B&Q yesterday but can't find anything other than no-smoke coals (clearly nobody but us uses the barbeque over Christmas  ).
Tried the no-smoke coals but they stink dreadfully, so the coals were taken out of the smoker again and were replaced with the the cold-smoke thingie. We haven't had it for long, previously it had only been used for ham so this was the first cold smoking session for bacon.

Now we now what to choose for bacon!
Hot smoked bacon looks, well, divine! It has brown edges and looks to die for (drool drool drool).
Cold smoked bacon looks... just like it did when it went in the smoker so many hours before - raw!

The cold smoker does keep on smoking for ages even in freezing weather and you don't need to bother checking temperatures, so in that respect it works really well. And the bacon smells fine (haven't tasted it yet), but... we very much prefer the look of hot smoked bacon!     

So we've learnt our lesson: in summer, buy enough normal barbeque coals to keep you going through winter! 

Wish I could upload a picture...

[Eve]

STOP PRESS!

We've learnt another lesson: never put no-smoke coals in your smoker! 

We just fried some lardons of the cold smoked bacon and it's not nice, it tastes like the chemical on those stinking no-smoke coals - even though we took those out of the smoker when we notice the smell and put apple wood dust in instead. 

So we're going to soak the bacon again to see if we can get that chemical taste back out (never soaked something twice before...), then try and find proper coals tomorrow so that we can hot smoke it after all and hopefully rectify the problem. We'll probably have to clean the inside of the smoker first to get rid of that horrible chemical taste...

Sigh...  We were going to use that bacon in a Christmas brunch quiche. Might try smoking it in the oven with the back door open...

[robert waddell]

is it a home made smoker      is it pale brown

[Eve]

Hi Lilian, I just modified the message above...
It's a black Kingford Bullet, works a treat both as a barbeque and as a smoker (hot as well as cold). But clearly using no-smoke coals (even though it was only for a very short time and before the meat went in) was a BIIIIG mistake! 

[Eve]

Christmas homicide only narrowly averted!

After He Who Should Know went on and on about how there are no more barbeque coals to be found anywhere in the house / garage / garden, he gave me a look as if to say "if you really must but don't expect to find anything" when I said I'd go and look in the garage just in case.

In the garage, I found... a bag of bbq brickettes!
HALLELUJAH!
It's a good thing he's the most wonderful man in the world because he nearly got the bag thrown at this head!

The chemical-taste bacon is soaking, we'll pat it dry and then it's going for a hot smoke this afternoon, no time to let it dry for a few days. That quiche might even make it to the brunch after all!

[Hilarysmum]

Wonderful, so true .... still laughing.

[Eve]

It worked! Resoaking and resmoking and the chemical taste is gone!

Usually we go on holiday over Christmas - think we'll have to go away again next year as this is just too stressful!
 


Happy Christmas