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To Cook a Ham of Pork
Wash off the salt and put it in a pot of water; boil from four to six hours, according to size. Do not take off the skin, as it preserves the juice and is much better cold. It is also nice to slice and broil with pepper and butter over it.--Mrs. P. W.
This is a Virginia country ham — dry-salt cured, hard, and very salty — not the pink, wet-cured, ready-to-eat ham sold today. The method is sound, but it assumes a ham the modern reader has to seek out deliberately.
- Which ham this isAn uncooked, dry-cured country ham, bone in, typically 12-16 lb. A supermarket "ham" is already fully cooked and brine-injected; boiling one for four hours would reduce it to threads. Look for a whole uncooked country ham from a Southern curer.
- Washing off the salt is not enoughScrub the exterior mould and salt off, then soak the ham submerged in cold water in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours, changing the water two or three times, before it goes in the pot.
- "Boil" means simmerA true rolling boil for hours toughens the muscle and shreds the outside. Bring the pot up and then hold it at a bare shiver, around 180-190F. Reckon roughly 20-25 minutes per pound; four to six hours matches a 12-16 lb ham.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockAn instant-read thermometer in the thickest part, clear of the bone, should read 160F. The shank bone will also wobble loose when the ham is done.
- Leaving the skin onThe instruction is the hinge of the recipe. The rind and fat seal the meat during the long simmer and keep it moist as it cools. Peel the skin off only after the ham has cooled in its own liquor, which is also worth doing rather than lifting it out hot.
- The potA ham this size needs a stockpot or canner of 20 quarts or more so the whole joint stays submerged. A turkey fryer pot on an outdoor ring is the practical modern substitute.
- The cooking liquidIt will be far too salty for stock. Discard it, or use a very little of it, well diluted, to season a pot of greens or beans in the old style.
- Slicing and broilingFor the second serving suggestion, cut the cold ham as thin as you can manage and give it a minute or two a side under a hot broiler or in a dry skillet — long enough to blister the fat, no longer. Country ham dries out quickly.
- YieldA 14 lb bone-in ham serves 25 or more as a sliced cold dish, and keeps wrapped in the refrigerator for about a week once cut.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by more than two hundred ladies of Virginia and neighbouring states, treats ham less as a recipe than as a household fixture — the hog was killed in cold weather, salted, smoked, and hung to feed the place through the year. Many of the book's contributors are identified only by initials, as "Mrs. P. W." is here. Boiling was a standard treatment for a hard-cured ham because it both cooked the meat and drew out salt, and the insistence on leaving the skin intact suits a kitchen where the ham was expected to be eaten cold over many days rather than served hot in one sitting. Virginia hams, and Smithfield hams in particular, already had a reputation well beyond the state by the 1870s, though the legal definition of a Smithfield ham would not be fixed until the twentieth century.