How to cook ham at home?

11

Prepared by: Marina Zolotseva

02/01/2015 Preparation time: 2 days. 9 hours 0 minutes

Store-bought deli meats sometimes raise doubts about their composition and quality. But don’t rush to give them up completely, because there is a recipe for making homemade pork ham.

How to cook “Homemade pork ham”

1. The classic recipe for homemade pork ham involves using the simplest spices, but if you wish, you can use absolutely any seasonings to your taste. Cooking ham in this way takes quite a lot of time, but most of it is spent on salting the meat.

2. To prepare the brine, you need to combine salt, spices and fill it all with water. In this case, the spices used are a mixture of peppers (black, allspice, hot) and cloves. You can add a couple of bay leaves, as well as other aromatic spices. Place everything on the fire and bring to a boil. Then cool completely.

3. To ensure that the ham is properly soaked in brine, it is convenient to use a syringe. With its help you can chop meat from all sides. Place the pork in a deep container and pour in the remaining salt brine. Place a weight on top (a jar of water, for example) and put it in the refrigerator. The recipe for making homemade pork ham assumes that the meat will be salted for at least 3 days. During this time, the pork must be turned several times so that it is evenly soaked.

4. After the meat has been thoroughly soaked in salt, you can bandage it tightly so that it holds its shape well and place it in boiling water. Cook on low heat for about two hours. Then carefully remove the ham and rinse it under cold water. Leave the ham to rest overnight.

5. That's the whole simple recipe for homemade pork ham. Now you can carefully cut it and serve it to the table. Appetizing and natural, it will appeal not only to adults, but also to children.

How to cook ham at home

Ham can be dry-cured and boiled. Dry-cured hams take a very long time to prepare - the process of preparing ham from pork takes up to a year or more. But boiled ham can be made quite quickly - in one to two weeks (depending on the size of the piece of meat), and if you have a special syringe for syringing with brine, it will turn out even faster.

Ham is usually made from pork, but it can be made from turkey or beef tongues.

Which meat to choose

Try to get a nice nice cut of meat, like pulled pork or boneless ham. I don’t recommend taking it with bone, because... the films that are around it will prevent the penetration of brine. When you buy meat at the market, ask for the skin and bones to be removed. You will also need a good set of spices and nitrite salt - you can’t cook without it!

5 steps to homemade ham

1. First you need to prepare a tasty and aromatic brine : to do this, take a 5-liter saucepan, fill it with water, put an onion cut in half, green onions, several grains of black pepper, three or four bay leaves, thyme, rosemary (the more herbs, there it might be more interesting). Let it all cook for 4-5 hours, covered with a lid. You can add 50 grams of honey to this brine, but you don’t need to add salt at this stage .

2. Then you need to strain all this and add up to 5 liters of cold water, in which you first dissolve 250 grams of nitrite salt. And in the resulting liquid we put pieces of pork - about 5 kilograms.

3. We put all this in the refrigerator and store it for 10 days : during this time, the meat needs to be turned 3-4 times so that the brine passes through better. The process can be accelerated using a syringe-injector; the brine must be injected directly into the meat in several places - then the period will be reduced to 5 days of aging.

4. After salting, you need to take a forming mesh, a thin kitchen towel, waffle cloth or an elastic bandage, wrap the meat in a thick “candy” and tie the edges on both sides with a rope, and also tie rings tightly around it. There are special press molds for hams, such as the popular homemade ham makers in different sizes, but the same effect is achieved by shrinking it into a towel.

5. Next comes the hard part: to get a great ham you need to cook it for 12 hours at 62°C , so it's better to use a slow cooker that can maintain a stable temperature, or a portable sous vide machine. Place the “candy” with ham or a ham dish in a slow cooker and set the mode to slow simmering. Ham cooked at higher temperatures in a saucepan will also work, but it will be a little dry - all the gelling substances will go into the water.

Turkey ham is prepared much faster: the breasts or thighs are salted for about four days in a 5% nitrite solution, then tied in a rubber mesh or mesh sleeve and boiled.

Cooked ham can be stored in the refrigerator for one week.

Why is nitrite salt needed?

Nitrite in the form of saltpeter (solnitrum) began to be used in the late Roman Empire - at that time it was the only panacea for sausage disease. Botulus (botulism) is a terrible disease from which you can die very quickly, and nitrite, by binding to protein, prevents the occurrence of botulism. The presence of nitrite in sausage, ham and other deli meats is an objective guarantee for a person that there is no risk of botulism. In Russia, product ingredients indicate that nitrite salt is a color fixative, so as not to scare people with the word botulism, although the color does change to a more pink color. Nitrite in the form of saltpeter was used in the USSR before World War II, later they switched to liquid nitrite, and in the 1970s they began to produce and use only nitrite salt. In Europe, saltpeter continues to be used to this day.

At home, I recommend, no, I insist on using nitrite salt. The fact is that saltpeter and liquid nitrite have neither taste nor smell, and therefore they can be accidentally overdosed. And nitrite salt is a mixture of regular salt with a small amount of nitrite, usually 6%. If you put too much of it, the product will turn out very salty, but nothing bad will happen.

Homemade pork ham

You can prepare ham from pork meat in a slightly different way. The main ingredients that will be used in this case are presented:

• pork – 500 g;
• onions – 1 pc.;
• carrots – 1 pc.;
• parsley – 5 sprigs;
• garlic – 2 cloves;
• bay leaf – 4 pcs.;
• peppercorns – 6 pcs.;
• salt to taste;
• soy sauce - 2 tbsp. spoons.

When choosing meat for cooking ham, it is recommended to give preference to pork pulp, tenderloin or neck. In any case, you need to choose meat with a minimum amount of fat. Preliminary preparation of the selected meat involves thoroughly washing it and soaking it in cool water for half an hour.

After this, the piece of meat should be boiled in water for no longer than 5 minutes. Of course, for these purposes it is more convenient to use a single piece. If your choice is not a whole piece of meat, in order to collect it, it is enough to wrap it several times with culinary threads, which, if you don’t have it, can be replaced with gauze.

It is recommended to rinse the cooked meat thoroughly again and place it in a container with clean cold water. The next step is to add onions, previously peeled and cut into two parts, peeled carrots, parsley, salt to taste, bay leaf and black peppercorns to the pan.

The contents must be brought to a boil and simmered over low heat for no longer than 40 minutes. After the specified time has passed, you need to remove the meat and, after cooling slightly, stuff it with garlic, cut into thin long pieces. After this, the meat should be wrapped in foil, after dousing it with the specified amount of soy sauce.

It is recommended to steam the wrapped meat for no longer than half an hour. To do this, you can use both modern devices, represented by a multicooker and a double boiler, and an ordinary saucepan and gauze, tying it over a container of boiling water. Pork ham is ready!

Homemade chicken ham

How to cook homemade ham? First you need to decide what kind of meat you will use to prepare this meat product. If you are trying to follow a low-calorie diet, it is better to give preference to chicken ham, for the preparation of which you need to use:

• chicken fillet – 1 kg;
• garlic – 3 cloves;
• gelatin – 10 g;
• salt and spices to taste.

First you need to cut the chicken fillet into small pieces and season it with salt, ground black pepper and spices to taste. The next step is to add gelatin and thoroughly mix the contents of the container. After this, the meat should be transferred to a fireproof container.

For these purposes, you can use a regular milk carton with a capacity of at least 1 liter. After placing the meat in the bag, it must be sewn tightly and placed in a container with water. The contents must be brought to a boil and cooked for at least an hour and a half over low heat.

After the specified time has elapsed, the package must be removed and, after cooling slightly, placed in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours. All that remains is to get rid of the bag and cut the finished homemade ham into portions. The meat delicacy is ready to eat!

How to cook “Homemade ham”

Let's prepare the brine. Dissolve common and nitrite salt in water, add pepper and bay leaf, and boil. Let it cool down.

Place the prepared piece of meat in the brine. Using a syringe, inject all the brine into the meat.

Cover the meat and put it in the refrigerator for a day.

Wrap the salted meat tightly in film. We tie the ends of the film so that water does not get inside during cooking.

Bring water to a boil in a cauldron or thick-walled pan and lay out the future ham. Cook over low heat at a very low boil for 2 hours. Then turn off the heat and let the ham cool in the water.

After cooling completely, remove the film and place the ham in the refrigerator. Then cut and serve.