To Boldly Go Where I've Never Taken a Ham Before...Help, Questions!

Folks sure can make a piece of meat difficult to understand.

Ok, this piece of pig is known as a ham. Does it have to be cured to be a ham? No, it only has to be on the hind quarter of the pig to be a ham. Sometimes people get a single notion in their head and just can't seem to get by it.

The food we purchase called "ham" is indeed cured and sometimes smoked. That "ham" can be this same primal cut of pork or it can be from the front shoulder...still called "ham".

As far as the piece of meat discussed, and subsequently cooked, in this thread...well, it can either be cured or cooked exactly the same way you'd cook any other part of the pig for bbq.

Where I currently live, many traditional bbq spots only cook hams. I'm not a fan of just hams for bbq, but many people are. If you're familiar with cooking butts or shoulders, you can use the exact same method. No need to cure it, no need to brine it, no need to inject it. You can do any of those things, but they are not requisite.

The product turned out in this thread looks extremely good. It made a great sliceable product. Taken a few more degrees and it would have pulled just like a pork butt.

Hams are as versatile as any other cut and can be prepared in various ways...none of them wrong.

Just don't get caught up in the though that a ham MUST be something cured before cooking (although that's how "I" prefer it).

YMMV...MDN
 
Phrasty said:
I tried to make cracklins with the skin from my hams and it was an epic FAIL!:doh::confused: Let me know how yours goes. I still have some skin on salt in the freezer, I wanna try it again but dont want to waste them. :thumb:

Happy everything turned out awesome!

Cheers
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I thought you could just cut 'em up and fry them but when I started doing searches for recipes I found that there are several techniques. I wanted quick and easy. So here's what we did.

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The recipe I used said to cut into pieces, salt, cover and refrigerate for 1 hour (not sure what this is supposed to do but that's what we did). Then heated just over 1" of oil in cast iron skillet. We used a mixture of canola and EVOO because that's all we had.
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Fried for 6-7 minutes per batch then drained on paper towel and seasoned
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They were actually pretty good but after a few batches I realized that they get crunchy only if you remove a lot of the fat. The fat alone when sliced off does get crunchy but when a thick layer is attached to the skin it stays kind of chewy. All of the skin either way turned out crunchy. So I cut a lot of the fat and meat away from the skins on the last few batches.

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Served them up with some squash, mushrooms and spinach simmered in the stock we made with the bone. It was a really good combination!
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Just out of curiosity, in what way did your attempt fail?
 
Pork rinds go good with beer, those look great. HEY, is that guerry's watch with an arm in it? :confused:
 
4dueces said:
Pork rinds go good with beer, those look great. HEY, is that guerry's watch with an arm in it? :confused:
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They went pretty good with Beefeater too! And actually that's my arm with Guerry's watch on, it was a bit too big!:becky:
 
We thought that pouring of the rub pic was pretty cool too.:becky:
 
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