How to Smoke a Ham

Smoked ham is a delicious meal that adds some extra taste to your breakfast/lunch or dinner unless the more traditional cooked ham. Here are the steps on how to smoke a ham.

Steps

Purchased (cured) ham

1. Check the color from the ham you are buying. A cured ham is usually deep rose or pink. Fresh which isn't cured has a pale pink to a beige color. If the ham isn't cured you need to either cured it yourself or cook it. See the steps below to cure it and smoke.

Fresh ham

1. Cure the ham. Before you smoke the ham you must either dry cure or wet cure/brine cure the ham. Curing is when you add salt, sodium nitrate or saltpeter, nitrites and sometimes sugars, seasonings, phosphates and ascorbates to pork for preservation, color development and flavor enhancement to the ham.
   • To dry cure a ham they rub the ham with a solution of a dry-cure mixture of salt and other ingredients.Since dry curing draws out moisture, it reduces ham weight by at least 18% -- usually 20 to 25%; this results in a more concentrated ham flavor. Dry-cured hams may be aged from a few weeks to more than a year. Six months is the traditional process but may be shortened according to aging temperature.Nitrate and nitrites contribute to the characteristic cured flavor and reddish-pink color of cured pork. Nitrite and salt inhibit the outgrowth of Clostridium botulinum, a deadly microorganism which can occur in foods.

Tips

• Try mixing up wood chips to change the flavor.

Warnings

• Mold can often be found on country cured ham. We believe most of these are harmless but some molds can produce mycotoxins. Molds grow on hams during the long curing and drying process because the high salt and low temperatures do not inhibit these robust organisms. do not discard the ham. Wash it with hot water and scrub off the mold with a stiff vegetable brush.

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