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Easy, delicious dishes. Kitchen Cabinet Tops chefs share favourite recipes. Sign up. Advertising Feature. Subscriber Only. Vanilla custard slices. Leek and smoked haddock lasagne with curry spices. Baked Cavanbert, cider roasted turnips, Black Forest ham. Smoked mackerel and cabbage frittata. Beef Stroganoff. Baked vanilla cheesecake. Simply put, cured ham has gone through a curing process designed to preserve the meat without refrigeration.
This process often involves a variety of chemicals and additives. On the other hand, uncured meats have not been treated with preservatives and must rely on natural salts and flavorings to keep from going bad. Both cured and uncured hams offer their fair share of benefits and drawbacks. Before making your ham decision, check out the following sections on what cured ham and uncured ham bring to the table.
To understand what uncured ham is, you first need to know what cured ham is. Unless labeled otherwise, the ham you find at your local grocery store is most likely cured ham. Cured ham is a popular grocery store and deli counter item because any ham product labeled as cured, baked or smoked is essentially pre-cooked and safe to consume.
When it comes to curing ham, manufacturers can either follow a dry curing or wet curing process. Some traditional dry-cured hams use salt as the sole curative agent, although this is becoming less common. Most dry-cured hams incorporate various herbs and spices for added flavor. Dry curing starts with cleaning the raw ham, then covering it in salt as it gets gradually pressed to drain out all the blood. After this step, the spices and seasonings are added to the ham.
Next, the ham is washed and hung up in a dark, temperature-regulated space to dry. Depending on the type of ham being dry-cured, the ham could be hung up for months or even years while its flavors develop. Dry-cured hams can also be aged for a rich, intense flavor. Once the drying period is over, you can usually eat the dry-cured ham without being cooked. This also means dry-cured hams can be kept at room temperature. Many modern dry curing practices also include using nitrates, along with the traditional salt, to preserve the meat.
Nitrates can prevent bacteria growth while giving the ham an aesthetic dark red color. However, many people are skeptical about the use of chemicals in meat and choose to shop for nitrate-free ham.
When ham goes through the wet curing process they are brined, then fully cooked either in an oven or a smoker. To speed up the wet curing process, some manufacturers inject the ham with the wet curing solution. The mixture usually includes water, salt, brown sugar, flavorings and chemicals like sodium nitrate, sodium phosphate and more. This method speeds up the wet curing process, more evenly distributes the salt throughout the meat and increases the final weight of the ham by even more.
Typically, wet-cured ham then gets cooked either during the processing or after a short aging period. Smoking is especially common since it adds to the preservation and the flavor of the ham. Hams that are cured are ready to eat. When you buy sliced ham at the deli counter, you may eat it cold, straight from the package.
However, a ham you intend to serve as a dinner entree should be heated through, though it is pre-cooked. Also known as fresh ham, uncured ham is the same cut of pork as cured ham, but the meat has not been treated with the same chemical brine, smoke or other flavorings used on cured ham. Because uncured ham does not contain the nitrates many of us have come to expect, an uncured ham may have a slightly different, more natural coloring than what you are used to seeing in the grocery store.
Despite its name, uncured ham has actually been cured — it has just undergone a different, more natural curing process than regular cured ham. Strictly speaking, curing is simply a method of preserving meat by using the raw ingredients of salt, acid and sugar.
These ingredients work to remove excess water from the ham, preventing the meat from spoiling. Other natural produce like beets and celery are also frequently used to create a tasty curing solution that does not contain any artificial chemicals or flavorings. Along with being free of synthetic ingredients and being better for your well-being, the natural curing process can produce more flavorful meat.
Although most uncured ham has been thoroughly cooked, you will still want to put your uncured ham in the oven until it reaches a safe temperature. When cooking your uncured ham, keep these guidelines in mind:.
Of course, the steps you take to prepare the ham will also influence how moist and flavorful the ham is, but it all starts with choosing a great quality ham. Check out the following section to learn more about how different types of ham are cooked and how it affects their taste.
Hams that are wet-cured are referred to as city hams. In addition to being wet-cured, they are usually smoked. City hams are pre-cooked, meaning all you need to do to prepare the ham at home is gradually heat it through in an oven set to a low temperature.
You can also slice off a piece of the ham and eat it cold or fry it on a skillet. Country hams are dry-cured and may also be smoked. Country hams are not as common as city hams in the U. Country hams can be eaten just as they are since they are preserved. They have a very salty taste and a drier texture compared to city hams. In other words, they more closely resemble preserved meats rather than the juicy ham you may picture for a holiday meal. You can heat these hams to serve them like you would a city ham, but you first need to soak them for at least four hours and up to 24 hours to add moisture and remove some of the salt.
You can then boil the ham to heat it, add your favorite glaze and finish it off in a hot oven. You can buy whole hams as well, but these cuts of meat can weigh 20 pounds or more. Since partial hams are cut from a whole ham, you end up with two main halves of the whole to consider. One half is known as the shank end. Shank end hams are what you likely picture when you think of a Christmas or Easter ham.
The butt end is lean and is easier to carve since it only has one bone. Whether you choose a whole ham, a shank end or a butt end, most people bake their ham in the oven or a roaster. The size of the ham will be the biggest determining factor in how long you should cook it.
With hams that come fully cooked, you only want to heat it through without overcooking it. Partially cooked hams will need to spend longer in the oven. Some cooks choose to score the outside of the ham in a diamond pattern and glaze it to make it more attractive and more flavorful. For a traditional look, try garnishing your ham with whole cloves or pineapple rings and maraschino cherries for your next ham dinner. A bone-in ham tends to be moist and have a nice, rich flavor that comes from the bone, but carving it can be a bit challenging since you have to work around the bone.
Once you finish carving a bone-in ham, the bone can be used to flavor soup beans, collard greens and other Southern classics. A boneless ham is made to be easier to carve. Rather than working around a bone, you can make clean passes through the ham to create uniform slices. This is generally true of many boneless hams you find at the supermarket, but it should not be the case with quality boneless hams.
Another option to consider is a bone-removed ham. Cooking times for bone-in, boneless and bone-removed hams are similar since the goal is simply to warm the ham. On hams you buy at the grocery store, the label should include a guide for how long to heat the ham. A discussion of ham should also give some attention to ham hocks , also called shanks or sometimes pork knuckles. Though ham hocks are not actually part of a ham, they are taken from the portion of the leg just below where the ham stops, at the end of the shank.
Ham hocks contain a lot of collagen, which breaks down as it cooks to turn the meat tender and delicious. Ham hocks make an excellent base for flavoring soups and broths. You can also fix them as an entree through methods like braising, roasting or slow cooking. Share or comment on this article:. Comments 0 Share what you think. Bing Site Web Enter search term: Search. Stay home to protect the NHS even when Covid is dropping?
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