A Phrasty Ham

Phrasty's hams look tooo good.

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=146985

So I knew I had to try my own.....here goes.

Brine
1 Gallon Water
1.5 cup Kosher Salt
2 cup Sugar in the Raw
1.5 oz Cure #1 (Pink salt)
1 Tbsp Black Peppercorns
1 Tbsp Allspice Berries
1 Tbsp Whole Cloves

Cooling off the brine...


I deboned 2 butts and left in the brine for 3.5 days. They were 13 pounds total weight. I then dumped the brine and soaked in water for 12 hours, changing the water once.

I didn't get a brine shot, but hey, it's just 2 chunks of meat in sitting in a bucket.

Then I trussed up the butts to help keep them together before cooking.



Time to hit the smoker at 275 over Kingford Blue and Hickory.

This is after taking them off at 120 internal for the glaze.



The glaze was a slather of French's Yellow Mustard plus a mix of brown sugar, all spice, clove and black peppercorns. I used about 3 cups of brown sugar with 4 Tbsp whole pepper corns, .5 Tbsp Whole Cloves, .5 Tbsp Allspice berries. I ground up the spices in the mortar before adding to the Brown Sugar.



Here they are about 140 Internal



Off and resting...



Resting is gonna be an issue, cause I want to keep cutting samples off for 'testing'....can't wait for dinner.

On a side note, the glaze is nothing like Phrasty's. Not sure how that dry glaze is done, but what I did turned into a wet slather almost immediately. Maybe I need to oven dry the brown sugar before application.

My wife already said I have to do this again, so seems like I have more opportunities to test it out.

Enjoy

Berock said:

Why remove the bone? Does it need to be removed for the brine?

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So, I removed it for easy slicing. After cooling a touch, I was able to cut it into 1/4 inch slices with ease. It just would have been a pain with the bone.

Using a butt was great though. I think Phrasty called it a cottage ham. The fat in a butt give the ham an unctuous quality to it. And it was super tender and juicy. Definitely something to try again.

Next time I'll probably try to get closer to this.....

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121301

Here are some other Phrasty ham posts....
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97531

Day 1
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122962
Day 2
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122963

And a post about a Phrasty ham..
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121840

Ok, so I read into that I should keep adding sugar until it 'dry'. It just melted into a slather almost immediately.

It tasted fantastic. I'll probably add some more clove, allspice and peppercorns in the brine and in the sugar next time. It was super good, but could have used some more.

I will also get this a try with a proper ham, but damn were the butts good.

Good notes for the future.

fantomlord said:

Looks great! :thumb:

Does anybody know how to achieve similar results without using the pink salt? We prefer to avoid nitrites when we can...

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You can simply salt cure it, but you won't get the texture or the pink color that the nitrates create. I'll let someone else weight in on getting around that.

Bama Q said:

Thanks for sharing
I cooked two pork butts, the recipe works GREAT. Made a big hit for Thanksgiving Day. My wife was watching , she was not convinced on the process. After one bite she was hooked. Thanks

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Awesome. Glad it worked out. And a shout out to Phrasty for posting his work or I never would have tried it out either.