Smoked Fresh Ham

ANBR

This holiday season we took a chance and decided to cure and smoke a pork leg. Up to this point snack sticks have been the most complex items I have done. Never have I cured or smoked anything this big - risky Christmas morning endeavor. The pork was raised, processed and smoked on the property. I have learned so much from this community that I thought I would pass what I have done on. Nothing ground breaking, just a simplified version of Walton’s Smoked Ham recipe anyone should be able to pull off.

The result was a knock-your-socks-off, melt in your mouth, incredibly clean and fresh tasking Christmas Ham. All kids, grandkids, siblings, in-laws, and the misses agreed - best ham they have ever had. This recipe is etched in granite and we do not plan to change any aspect with respect to this method/ingredients.

Following Walton’s Ham cure video tutorial/recipe - I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the units of measurements for the cure. I wanted to make sure the food was delicious and SAFE to eat but was second-guessing concertation levels for ‘lbs’ of water vs ham size, etc. To simplify things, I made a spreadsheet to be able to apply to any weight of ham - scaling the 25lb bone-in example. The tutorial Walton put out is a great place to start and a required watch for the spreadsheet to make sense.

Note - my ham was boneless at 16 pounds. If doing a bone-in ham at 16 pounds, the flavor profile will be be a bit stronger.

Enter your Ham weight (lbs & oz) and the desired pump (20%) in the orange boxes. The green boxes output the amounts of water/ingredients for the injection specific to your ham weight. I used grams (g) for the dry ingredients.

Also, my smoker is very difficult to keep under 170 degrees. So my cooking schedule was a bit different than the one mention in the tutorial.

Here is the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YZ-Fp-lw1tqjd2fBJ7zRMCgVLF1P6xbYwdlOxbpLn5A/edit?usp=sharing

Here are some pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1p1nymIIeSLypNCNt5BllI6Eh4aJZWygn?usp=sharing

PapaSop

@Aaron-B
Well done. Nice spreadsheet as well. Try the pics again. May have to reduce the size. Website is moving at a snails pace right now on my end.

John Belvedere

Looks delicious and nice job on the spreadsheet. As for the pics choose small when uploading the pics amd you shouldn’t have an issue.

ANBR

PapaSop
Thank you! I tried just about everything to get the picture to load… wasn’t happening.

cdavis

@Aaron-B man that looks great and thanks for the spread sheet.