Boil pork ham for 3.5 hours at a temperature of 80 degrees.
How to cook ham
Products
Pork ham – 1.5 kilograms
Salt – 110 grams (5 tablespoons)
Water – 1 liter
Black pepper – 1 pinch Cloves
– 2 pieces
Dried hot pepper – 1 piece
Food preparation
1. Rinse the pork ham well with cold water, dry it, if there are veins, cut them off.
2. Prepare the brine. To do this, pour 1 liter of water into the pan, add 5 tablespoons of salt, pepper, cloves and put on fire. Boil.
3. Remove the pot of brine from the heat and cool.
Injecting and marinating ham
1. Take a 20 ml syringe, fill with chilled brine and inject. You need to make about 25 injections on all sides, using half the brine. Between injections should be approximately the same distance.
2. Place the chopped meat in a deep container, pour in the remaining, unused brine, press down with a load and put it in a cool place, refrigerator for three days.
3. Once every 24 hours, the meat must be turned over to the other side.
Cooking ham
1. After 3 days, remove the pork from the brine.
2. Put a piece of meat on the table and roll tightly. For fixing, you can use twine or a special stretch film.
3. Pour water into a deep saucepan, put on fire and heat to a temperature of 85 degrees.
4. When the water is heated to the required temperature, lower the ham into a pot of water. Reduce the heat so that the temperature of the water drops to 80 degrees on a food thermometer.
5. Cook for 3.5 hours. The temperature should not rise higher, as the meat will lose its appearance and juiciness of the product.
6. After the time has elapsed, remove the ham from the pan, wash with hot and then cold water.
7. Cool and refrigerate for 12 hours. Eating the ham right away while it is still warm is not advisable, as it may seem too salty. After standing in a cool place for 12 hours, the juices and salt in the meat will disperse, and the ham will acquire a more delicate taste.
Tasty Facts
– Ham is a piece of boneless meat that has been salted or smoked. As a result of cooking, the product has a preserved monolithic structure of meat in an elastic consistency. As a rule, pork ham is used for cooking ham, sometimes front, back shoulder blades, in rare cases, ribs and other parts. Ham is traditionally prepared from pork, but chicken, turkey, and sometimes bear meat or venison meat are often used.
– For cooking ham at home, pork ham or neck is most suitable. When choosing a ham, preference should be given to its lower part, since it has less cartilage, fat and is easier to cut. During the preparation of ham, fresh, chilled meat is used. If it was frozen, you can not defrost it in the microwave or in hot water, because the ham will lose its taste, nutrients and lose its appearance. Before cooking ham, the meat must be washed with water, dried with a napkin and thoroughly cleaned of veins and fat.
– For cooking, you can use different spices and mixtures of them. Most often, allspice, black pepper, coriander, chopped bay leaves, cloves, dried herbs, a mixture of Italian herbs, various mixtures for meat, and cinnamon are used.
– In order for the ham to have a spicy taste, in addition to spices, it is recommended to grease the meat with mustard.
– After cooking the ham, the broth remains, it can be used when cooking soup or cooking sauces based on it.
– During the preparation of ham, the technology of injection of brine is used. This procedure provides softening of muscle tissues and allows the meat to be salted evenly.
– It is necessary to turn the meat during pickling so that the ham is evenly salted and retains a uniform shade of meat.
– Since it is quite problematic to estimate the temperature of water when cooking ham by eye, it is recommended to use a cooking thermometer for the best result.