Picnic ham - Updated, we're out of the brine!

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waywardswede

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Aug 5, 2013
252
21
Buffalo, NY
Alright, I'm going to try a picnic ham.  I ordered a shoulder (along with a belly for bacon) from a local butcher and picked it up on the way home from work today.  I'm going to use Pop's brine:

for every 1 gallon of water, add: 

1/2 cup sea salt

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 oz cure no. 1 pink salt

 

stir thoroughly until clear amber color, pour over meat.  I injected it in several locations along the bone, from the top and from the bottom.  I put it in the brine bucket and weighed it down with a gallon ziploc bag.

The only thing I'm worried about is its size, it's only about 5 1/2 lbs.  There's not going to be much meat on it, but for my first time that's probably ok.  I'll only be wasting $10.28 if it goes pear shaped.

Here are the pictures.  I trimmed of the skin, I have that in the fridge because I'm not really sure what to do with it.





See you in about 3-4 weeks.
 
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I really want to see how this turns out! I'll be waiting.

Disco
Disco

The waiting is going to be the hard part!  I'll be posting updates.
 
Your going to love the flavor the way you mixed it. I've got some skins now and was thinking this looked pretty good. Mules pork rinds.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/131873/pork-rind-pellets-from-scratch
Todd

Yeah, those look really good.  I only have this one small piece, though, I wonder if I can freeze it until I get a couple more.
 
OK, I've been flipping this in the brine and checking it every other day for 26 days, it's been torture.  Pulled it out of the brine this morning, everything looks good, no smell or slime or anything funky:


It looks really red in the photo, not sure why.  The brine was a deep tea color.  Rinsed it off real well, dried it with paper towels and got it into a nylon mesh bag to dry out for a day, hanging in the fridge:


We'll get it in the smoke tomorrow morning, will be back with more pictures then.  Looks like I'm going to have to fight the snow tomorrow, should be fun!
 
Man another ham thread.

Looks like I am going to have to get that shoulder out of the freezer.
 
 
Man another ham thread.

Looks like I am going to have to get that shoulder out of the freezer.
CF, yeah, that's one of the problems of looking at the posts here.  I must 10 recipes for stuff I would like to do tomorrow!
 
We really enjoyed the one that I smoked. Don't throw away that bone, you'll have some good beginnings for ham and bean stew!
Thanks Case, I always save the bones and stock from the ham.  I'm really looking forward to the smoke flavor this should have, and how that will taste in a soup.  Think split pea will be good idea...
 
OK, out at 7:00 this morning, got about 3" of snow last night was all:


Got the ham hanging from the top hooks:


Applied cold smoke with the AMNPS for a couple of hours, then got a chimney of briquettes to get it to about 150, along with some apple chunks.  Let it hang there for a couple of hours, then added some lump charcoal to get the temp around 175.  Here we are at 6 hours, IT of ham is at 105:

 
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yahoo.gif
 
 
OK, out at 7:00 this morning, got about 3" of snow last night was all:


Got the ham hanging from the top hooks:


Applied cold smoke with the AMNPS for a couple of hours, then got a chimney of briquettes to get it to about 150, along with some apple chunks.  Let it hang there for a couple of hours, then added some lump charcoal to get the temp around 175.  Here we are at 6 hours, IT of ham is at 105:

Looking Good!!!
 
Pulled it at 140 degrees, just ran out of time.  Cranked the heat up to 220 for the last 3 hours, picnic was in the smoker a total of 9 hours.  Took a few pictures, now in the fridge until Saturday for the smoke to equalize.





Was all I could do to keep from ripping into it right now.  Sure hope it ends up tasting as good as it looks and smells.  That's all until Saturday.
 
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