You will need:
- 2 litres of UHT apple juice – the stuff off the shelf, not fresh because the UHT stuff is effectively sterile which helps prevent infections.
- Leg of pork, or boneless leg that’s tied or whatever pork pieces you want, up to 10kgs in total for this recipe quantities.
Put both the juice and pork in the fridge to cool overnight.
In a large ( up to 10 litre ) pot add:
- 2 litres of water
- 4 garlic cloves, smashed with the side of a knife, skin and all is fine
- 2 or 3 oranges depending on size – peel and juice, and leave the skins/pith out
- 600g brown sugar
- 550g salt
- 50g #1 curing salt
- 5 bay leaves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 1 tbsp cloves
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbsp cracked pepper
- 1 tbsp mustard seeds
- 10 juniper berries
- Bring it to a boil while stirring to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom, but don’t let it boil rapidly it will overflow. Then let simmer for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and with a lid on, let it cool overnight.
- The next morning, strain out all the bits, and add your apple juice, you should then have 5 litres in total, but measure it to make sure.
- Add enough water to bring the total brine volume to 10 litres.
- Weigh your ham, if it doesn’t already have a weight on it. For each kilo of meat add 1 litre of brine.
- With the pork in a large bowl to catch the brine, Inject into the pork lots of times with your meat injector.
- Collect all the brine, including the stuff you didn’t use, the stuff in the bowl and whatever is coming out of the meat, and put it into either:
- A large zip lock bag with the air squeezed out – Ikea sells good big ones, but you can get them from food supply places too.
- Or a bowl that lets you submerge the meat totally in brine. Make sure to put glad wrap on the surface of the water, and a weight on top to hold it under the surface.
- And put in your fridge.
- If you want, you can reinject every 2-3 days for the first week, not super critical for smaller pieces, but definitely for larger ones.
- Leave for 2 weeks total, or longer if for a larger cut or if you’re in a zip lock bag with the air out as it will survive longer that way.
- After 2 weeks take it out, rinse it under the tap and put it in the fridge on a plate, uncovered, exposed meat side up to dry out for at least 24 and up to 48 hours.
- Smoke in your smoker of choice at 110 degrees until internal temp reaches 63-65 degrees.
- Take out and allow to cool and try not to eat it all before Christmas Day.
Faster brine option:
If you want to do the brine all in one day, you can cool it after step 1 with ice. Add your apple juice, and measure the total volume, you should have around 5 litres, but check to make sure. Add the equivalent of 5kgs of ice to bring the total to 10 litres total and no more – eg if you end up with 5.5litres, then you can only add up to 4.5kgs of ice. But this should be enough to bring the temp down below 10 degrees, which is what you need, preferably more like 5 if you can.
In this version I don’t bother straining it because you haven’t left it overnight to cool, and it doesn’t matter if they’re left in the brine and it will help to add flavour but they do get stuck in the injector needle, so can be a pain there.
After you’ve cooled the brine, and made up to 10 litres total, continue with step 4.
Half recipe option:
You could easily halve it to do 5 litres, but also once made you can freeze it and use it in a few weeks. The spices are hardest to do half of, but it doesn’t have to be super precise.
Chunky brine option:
You don’t have to strain it, you can leave all the bits in. I think it makes it less likely to get infections like mould etc but if you’re in a zip lock it should be fine.