It's interesting to look into the actual necessity behind our most beloved food traditions. For example, the most popular food served for Easter in the United States is ham.
This makes perfect sense. Historically, the average farming family kept a cow or ox — if they could afford one at all — for work and milk, not meat. One pig a year was bought in the spring, fattened over the summer, and butchered at the beginning of cold weather.
In the early spring, game wasn't hunted because it was still skinny from winter and the females needed to give birth. The new pigs and drop calves either hadn't been born yet, or were worth too much money as a commodity to eat as babies. Poultry wasn't particularly special enough for a holiday dinner, unless you were lucky enough to have a grown goose or turkey — which most people didn't. Like piglets, young fowl were usually purchased in the spring and then eaten or preserved before winter so they wouldn't have to be housed and fed over the cold season.
If you were a sheep herder, you might have enjoyed a roast leg of lamb, as lambs are born early — say with some jelly made with fresh spring mint. Still, the only big piece of meat available to most people was a ham from the fall butchering, which had been put aside for just this occasion.
Preserved pork is arguably the meat that has kept the world fed more than any other. Ham, the generic term for the salted and preserved back leg of a pig, has taken on a multitude of different forms; all are very different in how they have been processed, how they should be prepared, and how they taste.
Country ham — Country ham is a United States convention, associated with the Southeastern states. Country hams are dry-cured with salt, sugar, and saltpeter, which retards spoilage and keeps the meat bright pink. After a period spent soaking up the cure and then aging, most country hams are smoked and then further aged, sometimes for up to a year. According to the Virginia Cooperative Extension, exceptions include some hams produced in southwestern Virginia, which are not smoked but further aged in a coating of molasses, saltpeter, black and cayenne peppers.
Country hams are shelf-stable at room temperature but must be kept refrigerated if sliced. Mold on the exterior of a country ham is normal. Simply scrub it away under warm running water.
The ham is cured but not cooked. Whole hams must be washed and soaked to remove excess salt, and all country hams should be cooked before eating.
City ham — City ham is soaked, injected or pumped full of a liquid salt and nitrate or nitrite brine, often with added sugar. These are our common, refrigerated hams found in all grocery stores.
After brining, the hams are hot smoked, smoked and steamed, or smoked and boiled, depending on the manufacturer. They are fully cooked and can be eaten cold, although we usually bake them with a glaze for a nice presentation. Spiral-sliced hams are city hams. Picnic hams are pork shoulders treated to a city ham style brine/smoke/cook treatment.
Deli ham — Also called ground and formed or sectioned and formed, deli hams are not actually a whole leg but pieces of city-cured meat bound together with, according to the USDA labeling guidelines, up to 15 percent ground ham. Ham-and-water products must list how much water and additional ingredients are included with the ham meat.
Prosciutto — Prosciutto is a ham of Italian origin, representative of a whole class of European salted, dry-cured hams. According to the Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma, Parma prosciutto contains nothing but sea salt and meat. The hams are salted twice and pressed to expel as much liquid as possible, then air-dried in humid conditions for up to two and a half years. A quarter of the ham's original weight will have been lost by the end of processing.
Because of the lower moisture and salt content as compared to American salt-cured country hams, prosciutto does not have to be soaked or cooked before eating. The meat is velvety soft, slightly salty, and tangy. Other European dry-cured salted hams available locally include prosciutto made elsewhere in Italy, and Serrano ham from Spain. There are also American-produced prosciutto, such as that from Volpi in St. Louis.
Speck- Speck is a dry-cured salted and spiced ham from northern Italy that is lightly cold smoked. It has the texture of prosciutto but a darker color and the flavor of its particular spice rub. Real imported Black Forest ham is similar. Both are rubbed with a spice blend and smoked over juniper. Black forest ham has a dark surface due to prolonged smoking. Don't mistake "Black Forest Style" deli hams for the real thing, which should be dry, translucent when sliced thin, and very dark red.
Alton Brown's Baked City Ham
7 -8 pounds city-style brined ham, hock end
¼ cup brown mustard
2 cups dark brown sugar
1 ounce Bourbon (poured into a spritz bottle)
2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies
1 Heat oven to 250 degrees. Remove ham from bag, rinse and drain thoroughly. Place ham, cut side down, in a roasting pan. Using a small paring knife or clean utility knife, score the ham in a diamond pattern over the entire surface.
2 Tent the ham with heave duty foil, insert a thermometer, and cook for 3 to 4 hours or until the internal temperature at the deepest part of the meat registers 130 degrees. Remove from the oven and use tongs to pull away the diamonds of skin and any sheets of fat that come off with them.
3 Heat oven to 350 degrees. Dab the ham dry with paper towels, then brush on a liberal coat of mustard. Sprinkle on brown sugar, packing loosely as you go until the ham is coated. Spritz this layer lightly with bourbon, then loosely pack on as much of the crushed cookies as you can.
4 Return to the oven uncovered and cook until interior temperature reaches 140 degrees, approximately 1 hour. Let the roast rest for a half-hour before carving.
Baked Country Ham
From Clifty Farm Country Meats
1 whole country ham
1 cup brown sugar or honey
1.5 cups additional brown sugar
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
10 whole cloves
1 Soak in water overnight before boiling. Remove hock; scrub ham thoroughly with stiff brush and warm water, if molded.
2 Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place ham, skin side up, in deep covered pan. Add water to within two inches of top of pan and add a cup of honey or brown sugar. Cover and place in the oven. Cook slowly and bring to a slow boil. Cook approximately 20 minutes per pound of ham.
3 The ham will be done when it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees.
4 Remove skin and allow to cool in liquid in which it was cooked.
5 After ham is cool, remove from liquid and cover with paste made of brown sugar moistened with vinegar. Stick with cloves. Place under broiler or in hot oven until sugar is melted. 6 Serve hot or cold.
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