Brown Sugar Cured Ham - American Style

This is what a ham looks like before it's shot full of sodium, covered in sugar paste, smoked and finally wrapped in ubiquitous ubiquitous, crinkly, metallic bag.

Pardon me if the following is obvious, but ham is traditionally made from the cured, cooked or smoked thigh portion of an animal's leg.  And, more often than not, ham is made from a pig's leg.  While this may seem like a very rigid formula, there are many types of hams made in many styles ranging from Ibirian Ham from Spain to domestically produced Smithfield Ham from Virginia.

The ham pictured is made from local, free range pork.  It was lovingly prepared by my butcher husband.  He cut it, removed the skin and trimmed it of most of the fat.  This particular ham weighs about 5 pounds, a manageable size for me to cure and then smoke.  However, hams can be very large depending on the size of the animal they came from .

My ham was brown sugar cured.  This process entailed preparing and then submerging the meat in a brine solution of dark brown sugar, honey, molasses, kosher salt and DQ Curing Salt for 6 days.  The amount of time it needed to brine was based on the weight of the meat.  Once it was fully cured, I let it air dry for 24 hours under refrigeration and then applied a glaze of honey, brown sugar and really fantastic grainy mustard.   The final process is to smoke it, slow and low over apple wood until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees.