Old Farm Cure (Not Smoked)

My wife brought this method from her farming family who used it for generations and no one died. We still use it to this day and love it, but the warming winters in Ohio are making me nervous.

Buy or butcher a few fresh hams. We normally have the skin left on but one year the butcher skinned them and it really didn't seem to make any difference.

Then for each ham have a heavy sheet of cloth (we usually used old CLOTH feed sacks or heavy muslin big enough to completely swaddle the ham) and lots of clean newspaper. Also have lots of used baling twine available (or other heavy cord if you're a city slicker).

For each ham mix together
1 pint kosher salt
2 Tbls Brown Sugar
2 Tbls Black Pepper
1 Tbls Red Pepper

Lay down your sheet of heavy cloth and cover it with overlapping sheets of newspaper (I'm guessing 5-8 plies).

Lay the ham on the paper and start rubbing the salt/sugar mixture into every nook and cranny. Keep rubbing 'til it just won't take any more. Then try to evenly disperse the remaining mixture as you snugly wrap the ham evenly in the newspaper followed by the cloth. We were always told the the closure of the cloth should be at the fat end so the ham could be hung shank down. We usually had a big enough sheet of cloth so that one person could hold the closure and another could start twisting the package so the the cloth compressed around the ham. Then wrap the package with multiple turns of baling twine or cord to keep the package tightly compressed. Hang in the haymow in mid December to mid January and leave it there 'til April or so.

Then take it down and unwrap. Clean away all the nasty looking skin and other crud. At this point Grandma put the ham in the fridge and used a meat saw and knife to slice off a meal's worth for cooking and kept doing this 'til it was gone. We take it to the butcher and have it sliced into half-inch slices and shrink-wrap and freeze it.

My first exposure to this treat was 47 years ago. It looked grayish and had a strange aroma. Two meals later I was (and still am) in love with it.

My wife usually parboils it in a frying pan with a little water to pull some of the salt, pours off the salty water, and browns it. Yum!

We live in northern Ohio and I will admit to bbecoming a little paranoid with the warming winters so we have backed away from using this method. If you have a cooler that can maintain a temperature below 40F then I wouldn't be afraid of trying this

And I haven't even tried to combine this method with my Smokette to make a smoked ham.