Trying a pork butt ham

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vikkip

Fire Starter
Original poster
Dec 24, 2014
46
16
SE Michigan

'Tis the season for ham, and after being sorely disappointed by the appearance of rolled "ham products" on family members' dinner tables this season, I decided it's time to make a "real ham".  While a country ham is something I want to do, I don't have a fresh pork ham or picnic handy, but I had a beautiful fresh 10 lb pork butt in the fridge.



I took off a chunk that weighed 3 pounds, 10 oz.  After working and reworking the numbers for a pickle cure, I did the following:



1644.27g boneless pork butt


500g water, heated to boil and removed from heat


47.17g kosher salt, added to water while very hot


26.8g light brown sugar, added to water while hot


1 TBS pickling spice (allspice, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seed, etc), added to water while hot


2 bay leaves, added to water while hot


...wait for water to cool to room temp...


6.86g InstaCure #1



my calculations put the equalized brine + meat at 193 ppm nitrite, 3.25% salt, 1.6% sugar.



I put the butt in a 2 gallon heavy duty Ziplock and injected about a quarter of the brine into the meat from all directions with a poultry injector, then poured the remainder into the bag.



I then sealed all but a corner of the bag, and submerged it into a 16qt stock pot full of ice water except the open corner.  I rotated the bag around until all the air had escaped, then completed the seal. This evacuates all the air from the bag.



I then labeled and refrigerated the bag...



more to come!
 
Last edited:
It came out really tasty. The small amount of cloves and bay leaves and allspice gave a good flavor. However, the bay leaves started leaching color to the meat after 2 weeks, and on smoking, the outside came out dark gray-brown, not the typical smoked cured pork color. Inside is pink, tender, with a great sweet/salt balance.
 
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