home made ham

Curing a cut of pork to make your own home made ham is a lot easier than many people think. The most popular meat to use is pork, shoulder (picnic ham) or hind leg (leg of ham), but you can make a ham out of just about any piece of meat from almost any animal.

How To Make Ham

Ham Cure

Kosher Salt

Brown Sugar

Pickling Spices

Choose Your Cut

Ham is traditionally made from the hing leg or the shoulder of pork. For beginners, we recommend you try making a ‘picnic’ ham from the shoulder first. The meat tastes pretty similar and the process is a bit quicker and easier first time around.

Prepare your brine.

How much brine you make depends on how big your piece of meat is. A general rule is you need to make enough brine to fully submerge your ham in it’s container + about 25% extra for pumping.

Inject your meat

When making ham, it’s very important you inject your meat with your brine as this ensures your meat will cure thoroughly. This is especially important when using a cut with bones in. Inject as deep as possible ensuring cure is throughout the meat.

Cure your meat

Once you’ve injected your meat thoroughly, place it in the remaining brine in your container of choice and place in the fridge. Ensure the meat is fully submerged. Curing generally takes 5-7 days.

Rinse and Soak

After the curing process, remove your meat and thoroughly rinse it under a cold running tap, ensuring to remove any and all excess salt and spices. After this, soak your meat in room temperature water for 2 hours to further remove excess saltiness and cure.

Equalize and for the Pellicle

Place the meat on a plate uncovered inside your refrigerator for 24 hours. During this time two things happen. 1) the remaining cure and salt should ‘equalize’ throughout the meat, resulting in a less salty and more ‘even’ tasting final product. 2) your meat will form a ‘pellicle’. This is a tacky sheen that will appear on the surface of your meat. The pellicle will help your meat more readily absorb a smokey flavour when it comes time to smoking.

Bring your meat to temp and turn it into Ham!

Yep, that’s right. It’s here at this step where you’ll no longer have a hunk of meat, but rather, a delicious ham. Set your oven or smoker to 110c. Cook your ham until it reaches an internal temperature of 65c.

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Top 1 home made ham recipes from across the web

The most viewed home made ham recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

Top Tags

How To Make Ham

The most viewed home made ham recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engine