Salty Ham

Smokenque,
There are a number of "salty "hams on the market. There is the famous "Smithfield "ham from Virginia, a good number of country hams from different states. (I have had a great one from Kentucky). One that is popular in Va is Peanut City hams. They aren't quite as good as a Smithfield, but a lot cheaper. $1.89 per lb opposed to $4.00 + for the Smithfield. These are salt cured hams that are cured from a few months up to a year or more. Most of them have to be soaked over night, scrubbed & then simmered and/ or cooked in the oven.I don't know about in Ca. but around here you can also buy it in the deli and have it sliced.
RT64

I'm not from the south, but you can make your own, smoke it or not. If you can find a fresh bone-in ham (without any curing), or bone-in picnic, all you need to do is dry cure the meat, with some dry cure such as Morton's Sugar Cure or make your own, or just use pickling or sea salt. I never use more than 4 percent cure, but in the old days before refrigeration they sometimes cured with up to 10 percent salt by weight. I leave mine open to the air in my meat refer for a couple of months. You can also buy bags to hang them in our kitchen to keep off the flies, if you have the guts. Salt and/or sugar act as the preservative. Smoking not required.

This is really a drying process so if you don't watch it it can get too dry to cut without a chain saw (just kidding). But this will give you a truly unique taste not available any where else at any price.

This is what real prosciutto is in places like Italy and Spain. The uniform sized stuff they call prosciutto in in this country that they cryovac, I don't know how they make that.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosciutto for more information.

It is pretty common in Ky/Tn to add the hard scraps from country ham to au gratin/scalloped potates.

Softens the scraps and gives a lot of flavor to a bland dish.

Adding a chopped yellow onion usually finds favor,as well.

A wilted lettuce salad,some overcooked half runner beans with saltpork,a slice of cantelope,buttermilk biscuits,and a big glass of sweet tea.

Your local groceries probably sell cryovacs of scraps,or biscuit slices,or center cut slices.

1/2 lb should be more than enough for a 14" casserole dish.

Have fun

Thanks all. Appreciate the help.

Smokenque,

I was reared eating Kentucky country shoulders (what you call salty ham). It is a complicated process of curing the hams and shoulders, back in the days before processing plants. Starting in December to March when the weather was cold enough to allow the processing, it started with killing the hogs, removing the hair, cutting the hog into pieces, rendering down the fat to lard and then curing the hams and shoulders. The cures were always secrets held by the matriarch of the family and required multiply applications and then smoking in the smoke house. I remember that the cures had brown sugar, white sugar, salt, spices and a ham cure that contained some nitrites or nitrates.

They placed a heavy string through the hock and hung them far enough away from walls and shelves that mice couldn't reach them and the smoke permeated the whole smokehouse. The hams and shoulders were then paper bagged, placed in a cotton net or cloth bag and hung again in the smokehouse. The hams and shoulders were ready to eat and was classified as a year old ham after it went through the June sweat, where fat would seep through the skin. A mold would soon form that was part of the cure. Relatives, all city folk, would be given a country ham, see the mold, and throw the ham in the garbage. The mold should have just been washed off with fresh water before boiling. We really did think city folks were dumb, some of my cousins didn't even know what caused baby animals.

You may have noticed above, I mentioned we ate the shoulders and that was because we sold the hams. During WWII we could sell hams and chickens to stores and restaurants without fooling with the ration stamps and the cured hams were more valuable. Our reward for all the hog processing was the tenderloins which had to be eaten before spoiling - no refrigerator, just a spring house. The rest of the hog would be made into sausage, cooked and cold packed (canned). My! My! Fried tenderloin, biscuits, wild blackberry jam, fried potatoes, and eggs for supper that night. It seemed like Mother's biscuits got larger as time has passed. They were about 2 ½ inches in diameter, but now I remember them as being 5 inches in diameter and my wife and I have never made a biscuit as light and lofty.

Did I mention that I went to school the next day smelling like lard. A hard life, however, my Dad had it worse than Mother and I, he was overseas and it was the neighbors and close-by farm relatives that helped us. Mother, in the beginning of the war, only had knowledge of raising flowers and I was eleven years old.

That life on the farm and raising tobacco as a youngster is the reason I decided that an education was a better way to go and even though I enjoyed the foods - have never looked back. Now for the place where we buy cured hams, which are mailed to us and is a Kentucky food business curing only Kentucky hams: www.critchfieldmeats.com , but selling other meat products.

Smokemullet

I had a similar childhood here in Arkansas, as many still do, except we have and had electricity. We took the fresh pork liver in the house immediately upon gutting the hog and the women would fix liver and onions for lunch while the men would continue processing the hog.

Thanks for the post, smokemullet. It brought back fond memories of my childhood.

Garden fresh lettuce, wilted with fried bacon and drippings. Over cooked green beans in my case, my mom used a pressure cooker, reasons I don't know for sure, again with chucks of bacon. Biscuits ain't really biscuits without using home rendered lard. Now real ham and hard times.

Nostalgia no, but with the realization that in the world in which we live, our prosperity could be snatched away at any time by the evil in men's hearts.

Great posts all.