Today we took down one of the hams that has been hanging up in the eaves since Aug last year. Have to say it looked MOST unappealing
However - spurred on by the comments of 'Don't panic' and 'if it smells ok and not soft and gooey then it will be ok' we carried on.
We started with tunnel boned hams, and although we wrapped the salted meat in the muslin it did mean that there was quite an big area of unprotected (as in no fat) meat on one side. On unwrapping it is evident that the lean meat area is ROCK hard, so much so that the meat slicer (decent butcher's one) was defeated on that area. We had to pare off the really rock hard stuff to then get to the lovely pinky red stuff
Thinner slices are ACE
they taste really great.
BUT - we did notice some really FOUL smelling and spongy (yuk) meat around the tunnel bone area so have cut all this area away. When we did the original salting last year I did try and get the salt deep into the hole but made the mistake of not actually packing it with salt - this year we will just cram it in and fill up the hole!
Because of the deep cutting out that I did we have ended up with 3 lumps of the ham - I've wrapped them in cling film and put them in the fridge.
We still have one ham hanging in the barn
We will definitely be repeating the process with a couple of the hams from this years pigs
Topic: Moment of truth - air-dried ham (Read 6732 times)
