Wet cure Boneless Pork into pink Ham
1) Buy a large leg and ask them to bone it out and take the rind off, or buy pork necks or any boneless pork, and trim off rind & fat.
N.B. If curing a whole leg with bone in, you have to carefully inject the curing brine along the bone to ensure the meat cures deep inside, as brining only gets in a few inches. It’s easier and safer to just brine boneless chunks.
2) Cut Pork into smaller narrow 1-2kg pieces as big pieces need to be injected with Brine, smaller pieces can simply be submerged to absorb the meat cure. The weight of all my Pork pieces is 8kg. Do half the quantities if you want, for 8 days effort I make it worthwhile and do lots, the rest can be frozen for ‘ron.
3) Pour 13ltrs/13kg water into a 20ltr bucket pail from Bunnings.
4) Total weight of Pork and Water was 21kg, the Brine needs 1tsp of Prague #1 ‘Pink Salt Cure’ per 3kg of water and meat. Our Prague #1 is the Commercial yellow double strength 12.5% Nitrite.
5) Stir in below ingredients into the water:
– 7tsp (7x5g=35g) PRAGUE #1 PINK SALT 12.5% Nitrite Curing Salt.
– 1 cup Brown Sugar (Dark Brown Sugar has a sweeter Molasses flavour).
– 1 cup MOIST MEAT BOMB to make Hams moist and juicy.
– 3 cups CHERRY SMOKED GRANULAR KOSHER SALT
– 1 Tablespoon or 4 Teaspoons SMOKED BLACK PEPPER CORNS
– 2 teaspoons Clove Powder.
6) Sink all 8kgs of Pork pieces into the sweet Brine.
7) Put lid snugly on the heavy Pail and place on solid floor of spare cold fridge.
8) Leave in fridge for 8 days. Prep Sat morning and take out Sun week and smoke it all on Sunday avo.
9) Day 8: Take Pail out of fridge and pour out brine, rinse the new Ham pieces a few times in fresh water then leave submerged in water for 1hr to get all the salt out.
10) Take out of water and rub sweet MAPLE BROWN SUGAR all over each Ham piece.
11) For Charcoal BBQ:- Smoke with LownSlow IRONBARK CHARCOAL & CHERRY WOOD CHUNKS. For Pellet Smoker:- Smoke with sweet LUMBER JACK PELLETS like CHERRY, or MAPLE/HICKORY/CHERRY COMPETITION BLEND PELLETS.
12) Smoke at 110C for 3-4hrs till each Ham Chunk reaches 63C internal temp.
13) Take Ham out to Rest and cool, then place in fridge for an hour till Hams gets firm for slicing.
14) Slice a few Hams into thin shaved slices with a good Meat Slicer. Slice enough up for a week. Freeze the rest of the Hams for another day.
