Curing The Hams

Good morning Janice and Mathew, Martin arrived home safe and sound after his visit to you in France.

While Martin was away visiting his parents I was busy still processing the pork 

 The Serrano Ham was ready for the next stage

Its now hanging in the wine cooler come meat curing cabinet

 In the wine cooler I have put a dehumidifier that is plugged into a controller, the controller has a wire that sits in the cooler and measures the humidity, you set the control to what you want the humidity, I have started it at 70% when the air humidity in the cooler goes above the setting the controller switches on the dehumidifier to draw the moisture from the air, over the next month or so I will slowly reduce the level that the humidity is set at this slowly dries out the ham, the ham will take at least 6 months to dry out.

 The boned ham that has been sitting in brine for the past week was taken out ready for the smoker it has taken on a fab colour

 The hocks that were in a different brine solution haven't coloured up at all.

 I got the hot smoker up to 160% put in the wood chips and added the meat.

 I went for an oak flavour this time

 Six hours of smoking and the ham reached the desired temperature inside, hot smoking cooks the food as well add the smoked flavor

 The hocks are a lovely colour, they will be used for soups.

 The ham was sliced up once cool, plenty of meat for sandwiches and salads, it will get vac packed and popped in the freezer for us to use.

 The first of the bacon joints was also sliced up

It will also get packaged up, we had bacon and some of the sausages with eggs for dinner last night, it all tasted delicious, there is still two bacon joints to hang this week I am also going to have a go at making Haggis.

I asked Martin to take a photo of the sliced ham for me, and I found this photo on my camera one for his mum.