Curing Gammon

[Sam Shepherd]

Hi,
After a bit of advice! Could anyone point me in the right direction for brining a gammon joint, I dry brine bacon with reasonable success but I am not sure whether this will work due to the thickness of a gammon joint. Should i wet or dry brine? Any help would b greatly appreciated.

 

[daveomak]

I read up on what a gammon is...
So, you want to cure this chunk of meat, maybe cold smoke it below 70 deg. F for hours or days to impart flavor, and NOT cook it until the slices hit the kitchen....
Chill the meat for 2 days to get it cold to the bone...
make up an injection brine/cure... 10% the weight of the meat using distilled water.... add kosher salt at 2% weight of the meat... add white sugar at 1% weight of the meat.... add cure #1 at 0.25% weight of the meat...
The ingredients are important... those ingredients are "clean" so bacterial growth will be retarded...
Brown sugar, non kosher salt have impurities that can impart bacterial growth and off flavors...
Cool liquid to refer temps... Inject the solution, ALL of it into the meat paying particular attention to the joints and along the bone... then inject the meat at 1.5" intervals to get complete coverage.. Refrigerate for at least 5-6 days... The gammon is now cured...
Warm to above ambient, form a pellicle, cold smoke below 70 deg. F...
Pellicle can be formed placing the meat on a wire rack in front of a fan for an hour or 2.. The meat surface will get sticky dry....
Cold smoking should be done over several days... 12 hours or so per day... the no smoke for 12-36 hours... the meat can remain in a "cool" smokehouse during the no smoke period... temps below 50 deg. F...
Cold smoke until you are satisfied with the color...
Keep refered during storage...
For a 10# gammon the ingredients would be..
1# distilled water.. 454 grams..
Salt... 91 grams..
sugar.. 45 grams...
cure #1.. 11.4 grams...
My choice for an injection syringe... You should make approx. 50 injections of about 10cc's each to get complete meat coverage at 1.5" intervals....




c farmer just used this method.. The ham after smoking and cooking to show how well this method cured the meat...

 

[Sam Shepherd]

Hi, Thanks for the reply. Makes for good reading. I was hoping to do a dry rub but maybe this is the way forward! Thank you!

 

[daveomak]

Doing a dry rub takes months or longer...

Recipe from Marianski's website....
American Country Ham
Only the hind legs of hogs can be called a country ham. They may not be injected with curing solutions nor placed in curing solution.

Meats Metric US
ham, bone-in 8 kg 17.6 lb.
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
salt 54 g 3 Tbsp.
Cure #2 10.0 g 2 tsp.
sugar 20.0 g 4 tsp.
pepper 6.0 g 3 tsp.
Instructions

1. Mix salt, Cure #2 and sugar together. Divide into three equal parts. Rub ham on all sides with ⅓ of the mixture. Place ham in refrigerator. Keep it covered with plastic wrap or a cloth to prevent drying. A good idea is to keep it in a zip- loc bag. This prevents the ham from drying. The ham should be kept at around 90% humidity, but the humidity in a refrigerator is only about 40%.
2. After 3 days, rub the ham with another ⅓ mixture and place in a refrigerator.
3. After 10 days remove the ham from the refrigerator and apply the last ⅓ of the mixture. Place ham back in refrigerator.
4. After 40 days (total salting time) remove the ham from the refrigerator and briefly rinse with tap water. Brush off any salt from the surface.
5. Coat the surface of the ham with pepper and stuff the ham into the netting.
6. Keep for 14 days at 40-42° F (4-6° C), 75% humidity.
7. Apply cold smoke (77° F, 25° C) for 24 hours.
8. Ripe (dry and mature) hams for 60 days at 77-86° F, 25-30° C), 65% humidity.

Notes
The ingredients are listed for 1 kg of meat. If the ham weighs 8 kg, multiply the weight by 8. For example it will need 54 x 8 = 432 g of salt.

Total processing time: 115 days.

Time can vary from 3-5 months. The actual time will depend on the size of the ham and processing temperatures.