Tasso

I have a cook coming up next week that called for Tasso Ham. I knew that would be a lost cause, trying to find that up here. Did a little reading and decided to make it myself. Had planned to do this a couple of weeks ago but the fire up here delayed a bunch of cooks. Anyway, I'll use it on the planned cook and freeze the rest for beans, soup, Jambalaya, Gumbo, whatever when Fall comes around. Here goes.

I picked up a 4 lb. boneless pork shoulder and sliced it into 1 inch steaks, approximately.



Rubbed it down with salt, brown sugar, black pepper, paprika and Prague Powder #1.



Left in in the fridge for three hours. Removed and rinsed off the cure and patted dry. Place back on racks in fridge for 3 1/2 days.



Put together the rub and applied it to the meat. The rub consisted of Cayenne (2 tablespoons!), white pepper and allspice.



Got my 18 inch WSM fired up with some pecan. Started the cook off with a running temp of 250. Supposed to go for roughly 3 hours to an internal 170.



Well, it was around 104 here today and the meat took off like a rocket. This just under an hour and it was around 150 IT.



I wanted it to get to temp at a more leisurely pace so I dropped the pit temp down to 225, and then again to 200.







Hit 170 after around 2 1/2 hours. Gave it a rest. The bottom rack was about 10 minutes behind the top so I gave that rack a few more minutes.

Sliced off a couple of small pieces and gave it a taste. It was excellent. Salty, smokey, and oh so spicy. Heat lever perfect more me. Can't wait to try it in a couple of cooks.



Well, that's it. Have a nice weekend everyone. Thanks for looking.

I'll look forward to seeing how you use that - looks good enough to eat by itself! I had to read up on it @ wikipedia, I'd heard about it but wasn't too sure what it was.

Clint said:

looks good enough to eat by itself!

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Thanks Clint. It's pretty darned spicy to use as a stand alone meal. Used as an ingredient in another cook would be ideal. Used in a nice Jambalaya or a batch of pintos, the heat would settle down as it blends with the other flavors and juices. Here's a link to a post from another member a few years ago. He does a good job and provides more detail, particularly if you follow the link to his blog. Wish I'd seen it before I did mine.

https://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?61851-Tasso-Cured-amp-Smoked&highlight=tasso+ham

I've had tasso ham gravy and it was outstanding. Love to see you give it a try.

Doug Quinn said:

I've had tasso ham gravy and it was outstanding. Love to see you give it a try.

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Thank for the idea Doug. I'll check it out!

Wow.... thanks for posting this, Cliff. Looks super. We had some Tasso ham at some friend's place last spring. Good stuff. Said they got it at Trader Joe's, but the TJs close to me has never heard of it.
Gotta try doing this, for sure.

Dunno how I missed this one. That tasso looks great!