Beef Hams
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Cure
Rub the leg of beef with coarse sea salt and let it sit for 24 hours to extract the blood.
Wipe the meat dry and press it to flatten.
Cut the meat into the shape of a common ham.
Mix coarse sugar, common salt, bay salt, and saltpetre in a bowl.
Rub this mixture thoroughly into the meat for one month, turning it daily.
After a month, remove the meat from the brine and wipe it dry.
Coat and smoke
Coat it with a mixture of coarse oatmeal and bran by rubbing it in.
Smoke the meat for at least one month.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Beef leg
- Provides the lean muscle that becomes the ham once cured and smoked.
- Coarse sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the salt in the cure.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the long cure.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic colour.
The step that matters
Turning the meat daily during the cure. Salt cures unevenly if the meat sits in one position, because the brine penetrates from the exposed surfaces first. Turning daily lets the cure reach all areas and keeps the ham from spoiling in spots.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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