[Sca-cooks] ham advice

[Stefan li Rous]

Angeline asked:
> It is "old fashioned Junior Johnson Brand old fashioned sugar-cured country
> ham"  dry-cured in the Eastern slopes and foothills of the blue ridge
> mountains.  distributed by suncrest farms in wilkesboro, NC.  Cured with
> salt, white sugar, brown sugar, sodium nitrate, and pepper.
>
> I followed the instructions which were:
>
> baking:  completely skin and trim ham.  Soak overnight in cold water.  Wrap
> ham completely in heavy aluminum foil in a manner to retain juices and pour
> approximately 1 1/2 cups of water insdie the aluminum wrap.  Bake at 350
> degrees for approximately 20 minutes per pound.
>
> I did all that, and it still turned out overly salty.  My Dad's idea is to
> reheat the ham when we want to bring some water to boil in a sauce pan and
> drop the meat in long enough to heat it, he thinks maybe the water will
> draw the salt out.  How much do you think it will ruin the taste of the ham
> to do that.  Other than it being salty, it tastes good.
>
> Any other ideas.

This type of ham has been discussed several times on this list.
Because of those discussions I ended up buying one of these. In fact,
since, I keep forgetting to start desalting it soon enough, I still
have some of it.

The main thing I can see from your description is that you only used
one soaking of water. I would have done several. I imagine you can
still do this, but I'm not sure what the effect of doing this on an
already cooked ham is.

There are a number of comments on processing such salt cured hams
in this file in the FOOD-MEATS section of the Florilegium:
ham-msg           (41K)  9/27/01    Period ham. Modern sources. Recipes.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/ham-msg.html

If I remember correctly, there is a wonderful recipe in this file
from Ras? that cooks the ham in apple juice or cider.
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****