Ham Day this year is Saturday, 30th of November. Start time is 10am, at Brett’s place. The first stage is just making the brine and watching it boil, so not everyone is required, if you are busy, coming early to mid afternoon is fine, enough time to inject your pork. If you can only come to pickup your pork and brine, that is fine too, as long as you can inject your pork yourself.
Cost is $125 for a half and $250 for a whole leg. Includes pork, spices and lunch. New bank details will come on WhatsApp. Money needs to be paid by the Monday 25th, I’m ordering on the 26th.
Everyone needs to bring :
- A bag of ice – perhaps an esky in case we have extras.
- Your meat injector if you have one.
- Tub to take your pork home in – best not to get cheap plastic if you can avoid it. Food grade is better.
- For a full leg you’ll need around 30 litres.
- For a half leg, 15+ litres.
- These are the ones we got for salami day, in Dandenong :
- https://www.equip2go.com.au/33l-plastic-crate-large-tote-box-432-x-324-x-305mm~37592
- https://www.equip2go.com.au/21l-plastic-crate-medium-tote-box-432-x-324-x-203m~37594
- They sell the lids separately – make sure you get one of those.
Everyone needs to :
- Take your pork home on Saturday – we don’t have room to store 150 kgs or pork and 150 litres of brine.
- Inject your own pork. We will have injectors on Saturday, but if you can’t hang around you’ll need to have your own or plan to borrow one. If you search for “ofargo meat injector”, there’s heaps of options, mostly on amazon. Make sure it’s stainless steel.
- Keep your pork in the fridge for three weeks. Turning or re-injecting if you feel like it. You need to keep it submerged, so you can push the water level up without diluting it by adding a zip lock bag full of water – don’t dilute it. Keep the pork below the water level, put a plate or weight on top if it helps.
- Smoke your ham either the weekend before Christmas or whenever after that you have time.
Outline of the process :
We buy whole and half legs of pork, and make up a brine. The brine has all the spices, salt and sugar in it, and is boiled and then cooled down with ice. Everyone gets their pork and injects it with the brine. Then it cures for three weeks. Can go a bit shorter or longer if needed. If you’re keen re-inject, as often as you can will help. Then take it out of the brine 24 hours before, rinse it off and put it in the fridge for 24 hours uncovered. Then hot smoke at 110 to internal temp of 65 degrees – could take most of a day. You can glaze it during smoking if you want. You need sample it straight out of the smoker, it’s delicious just then. You can then carve and eat straight away or chill and have cold, or reheat in the oven.
Recipe for 50 kgs of pork :
- 20 gloves of garlic, crushed.
- 15 oranges, slices, skin on.
- 2.7 kgs salt.
- 300g curing salt.
- 25 bay leaves.
- 3 kgs brown sugar.
- 10 cinnamon sticks.
- 5 tbsp cloves.
- 5 tbsp coriander seeds.
- 5 tbsp mustard seeds.
- 50g cracked pepper.
- 50 juniper berries.
Bring to the boil with enough water to dissolve everything. Then cool with ice, and :
- 10 litres apple juice.
And bring to 50 litres in total.
Each cut of pork gets 1 litre of bring for each 1kg of pork.
Leave a Reply