Lots 'O Pork

[Todd NC]

I would like to solicit opinions on something. My wife has a cousin that over the last couple of years started raising grass-fed beef and, more recently, grass and acorn fed pigs. We bought 1/2 of a pig and picked up the meat yesterday. The pigs came in larger then they originally planned for, and our 1/2 pig resulted in 110 lb of chops, ribs, belly, sausage, tenderloin, etc. One cut I'm not sure what I'm going to do with is a 26 lb ham - as in back leg, not cured. So, what would you do? Cure it (that's a pretty large piece of meat to cure), bone it out into smaller cuts for smoking/roasting, smoke it whole, etc., etc.?

 

[JKalchik]

If you have a container big enough, and enough refrigerator space, I'd cure that 26lb ham and long low & slow smoke it. I've been doing this with green (fresh) hams for several years now, I try to do one a year.

 

[Todd NC]

If you have a container big enough, and enough refrigerator space, I'd cure that 26lb ham and long low & slow smoke it. I've been doing this with green (fresh) hams for several years now, I try to do one a year.

Do you use a specific wet cure recipe and how long do you cure it? I'm not against it and I do have a container and refrigerator space for it.

 

[JKalchik]

Do you use a specific wet cure recipe and how long do you cure it? I'm not against it and I do have a container and refrigerator space for it.

Fresh/green Ham?

I've got a fairly large (18-20 lbs.) fresh/green ham from one of my coworkers (semi-heritage breed, don't recall which.) At the moment, it's hard frozen in the deep freeze. In 2 weeks, we're having an office potluck/smorgasbord. My intent is to smoke the day before, although (from another post,)...

tvwbb.com

 

[Todd NC]

Awesome. Thanks for the link.