Saturday, 8 December 2012

Hanging the hams

The two hams have been in salt with a weight on top for a month (we have another ham waiting in the freezer, perhaps we will wet cure it and the fourth was made into little roasts). According to the recipe we are following it was time to hang them.
We took them out of the salt and rinsed them off with cold water and rubbed some vinager on to them. It looks a bit gross here because we did not use saltpeter which keeps the pink colour more but doesn't seem to add much else so we didn't bother with it.
We then attached a butcher hook (which was much more difficult than you would think to get in) and have hung them from the rafters upstairs with cloth bags around them to protect them from flies.

It is not quite clear how long they will need to hang for, but some months. We can tell when they are ready apparently by squeezing them and they should be pretty firm but not totally rock solid. At the moment they feel pretty squidgy.


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