Hams the Yorkshire Way
Ingredients
Directions
Dry cure
Beat the hams well.
Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and salt-prunella.
Rub the hams with the mixture.
Lay the remainder on top.
Let them lie for three days.
Hang them up.
Pickle
Add enough water to the pickle to cover the hams.
Add salt until it can float an egg.
Boil the pickle.
Drain the pickle.
Place the hams in the pickle.
Press them down to ensure they are covered.
Let them lie for a fortnight.
Finish
Rub them with bran.
Dry them.
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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, preserving the ham.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its pink colour.
- Salt-prunella
- Acts as an additional curing agent that aids preservation and colour in the cure.
The step that matters
Add salt until it can float an egg. The brine must be strong enough to keep the ham preserved and to hold it up in the pickle. Salt concentration is what makes the brine dense enough, so judging it by an egg floating is a common check. Too weak a brine leaves the meat open 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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