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Anything Else Forum

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Home cured/smoked ham

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albinomosquito's picture
December 15, 2015 at 10:43am
37 Comments

Spent most of my morning reading posts from KevinJ, Oyster, BBQ_Fan, etc..  Not only am I really hungry now, but it got me thinking about my upcoming Christmas ham project.

A friend of mine raises his own meat.  Another friend and neighbor of mine built his own butcher shop (welcome to rural Ohio..).  I love to smoke meats.  We all love to drink beer.  I think you can see where this is going..

Long story short, I came into possession of a beautiful, fresh, 20lb whole ham.  The question now is, what do I do with it?  I've decided to attempt to cure and smoke this bad boy for Christmas.

Materials:

Here's the recipes I'm following:

The ham is currently thawing out in my fridge.  The plan is to drop it in the cure/brine solution on Friday and let it chill (get it?) until Christmas morning when I can start the smoke.  Meathead is pretty thorough in his descriptions, and I trust his judgement wholeheartedly, but I've always been one to add my own twist to canned recipes.  This being my first and possibly only time curing/smoking a ham, I'd like to hear from somebody with experience.

My questions to our makeshift BBQ community:

  • Anybody have any experience curing a ham?  If so, do you add anything to your cure other than salt and Nitrites?
  • What type of wood would you suggest for the smoke?
  • Would you rub the ham before smoking?  If so, which rub would you use?
  • Any good glaze recipes?
  • Any other tips/tricks/suggestions that might not be mentioned in Meathead's article(s)?

We'll see how this thread goes. I also have a slab of uncured bacon from the same hog that might be worthy of it's own discussion.

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