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.
Prepare the beef
Rub the leg of beef with common salt and let it sit for 24 hours to extract the blood.
Wipe it dry and press it to flatten.
Cut the meat into the shape of a ham.
Cure
For every 12 pounds of beef, mix ½ cup coarse sugar, ½ cup common salt, ½ cup coarse sea salt, and 1 teaspoon saltpetre.
Rub this mixture into the meat thoroughly for a month, turning it daily.
Remove the meat from the brine and wipe it dry.
Coat and smoke
Coat the meat with a mixture of coarse oatmeal and bran.
Smoke the meat for at least a 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
- Forms the ham; its lean muscle becomes the cured meat.
- Common salt
- Draws out blood and moisture and helps preserve the meat.
- Coarse sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the meat and helps draw moisture during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic cured color.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure in thoroughly and turning daily. Salt must penetrate evenly through the thick muscle to preserve the meat throughout. Uneven coverage or skipped turning lets some areas stay under-salted and vulnerable to spoilage.
“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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