The Ultimate Smoked Ham

[Draggingtree]

Click here to read our recipe, The Ultimate Smoked Ham.

 

We recommend serving The Ultimate Smoked Ham with a side of grilled asparagus and grilled sweet potato steak fries, and a bottle of slightly sweet rosé.

 

By Meathead Goldwyn

The world of hams is confusing, and that's an understatement, but it is worth getting a handle on things because a little knowledge will make your ham dinners much much better.

 

Hams are cut from the top of the rear legs of hogs, from the knee to the hip, including the big meaty rump muscles, and they can be divided into four broad categories: Fresh hams, dry cured hams, wet cured hams, and injected hams. Alas, when you buy a ham, it most often is labeled something else, like Boiled Ham, Canned Ham, Ibérico Ham, Picnic Ham, Prosciutto, Smithfield Ham, Smoked Ham, Spiral Cut Ham, and Virginia Ham to name a few. If your head is starting to spin, my article, The Science Of Ham, explains almost all the different types of ham, and it is worth a read if you ever hope to become a master hamster.

 

By far the most popular hams in the US are wet-cured hams, hams that have been injected with a brine and then pre-cooked. The brine usually has salt, sugar, and spice and lots of stuff nice, and the cooking often includes smoking. This was a method developed for preserving large hunks of meat like hog rumps long before refrigeration was invented.

 

Wet-cured hams are pinkish purple in color, often have a sweet glaze baked on, and are frequently put on a lathe where a blade can spiral cut them while they are turned. This makes carving them at your Easter table a snap. They usually come in a plastic shrinkwrap, and if it says "cooked" on the package, you can eat it cold right out of the bag. But cured hams are better served warm with a sweet glaze to counterbalance the saltiness from the brine that was injected into it.