“Curing” means preserving, typically via salt, sugar, nitrates, and/or smoke. You can also slice off a piece of the ham and eat it cold or fry it on a skillet. You can buy fresh hams from butchers, but in most cases, hams go through a curing process and a baking or smoking process, which helps to give them their signature taste and texture before being sold."}}]}. Country Ham Cured, smoked, and hung to dry for months, this is the Southern answer to prosciutto. Here’s the distinction. If you want to keep things simple and avoid comparing hams at the supermarket, choose a ham from S. Clyde Weaver Smoked Meats & Cheeses. "image": "https://sclydeweaver.com/content/uploads/2019/11/01-cover-feature-image-1024x686.png", Ham, a type of pork, can be preserved and prepared in a variety of ways. It’s salty, with a rich flavor and deep mahogany color, just as delicious cut thick and pan-fried as it is shaved and eaten as charcuterie with biscuits. Shopping for the best ham can be overwhelming since you’ll run into many labels and descriptions that may have you wishing you had a culinary dictionary handy. Partially cooked hams will need to spend longer in the oven. The ham slice is red with white fat only around the outside edge. They’re typically smoked, and almost always fully cooked, but—as always—check that label. Credit: Most hams you’ll find at your local supermarket are city hams. Cooking times for bone-in, boneless and bone-removed hams are similar since the goal is simply to warm the ham. It’s interesting to note that, while Americans call this breakfast favorite Canadian bacon, Canadians typically refer to it as “peameal bacon” or simply “back bacon.”. A country ham is a far cry from a city ham. Cooked Country … Smoking is especially common since it adds to the preservation and the flavor of the ham. } }, One set of terms you’ll likely run into when ordering ham off of a restaurant menu or purchasing one to prepare at home is “city ham” and “country ham.” The distinction between city and country ham is how the meat is cured. In other words, they more closely resemble preserved meats rather than the juicy ham you may picture for a holiday meal. "@type": "WebPage", One half is known as the shank end. It’s prepared and served in almost the same way, except for the fact that it’s usually made from a specific breed of white pig indigenous to Spain. "headline": "THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF HAM AND HOW TO PREPARE THEM", A boneless ham is made to be easier to carve. When you buy sliced ham at the deli counter, you may eat it cold, straight from the package. Hams can be ready-to-eat or not. To make it, producers take the raw meat and cover it with salt for over three weeks to cure it. If a rear leg cut of meat were immediately cooked, it would simply taste like any other pork roast. MyRecipes is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. 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. For a traditional look, try garnishing your ham with whole cloves or pineapple rings and maraschino cherries for your next ham dinner. It gets boned out before being rubbed down with a cure laced with spices like juniper and bay leaves. With a bone-removed ham, you still have the ease of carving that you get with a boneless ham, but you’ll see more of the delicious marbling throughout the ham that you would see with a bone-in ham. Rather than working around a bone, you can make clean passes through the ham to create uniform slices. "@id": "https://sclydeweaver.com/blog/different-types-of-ham/" The salty flavor of a country ham makes it ideal to accent other dishes likes beans and soups. Bon Appétit may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. It is coral red in colour … A 24-month prosciutto will have more funk and complexity than a 12-month (and this goes for all styles of ham across the board). Prosciutto CottoMoist, tender, and easy to love, prosciutto cotto—cotto means “cooked”—is the Euro version of the deli ham of your childhood lunches, but more flavorful and less salty. "dateModified": "2020-01-10" © 2020 Condé Nast. 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. 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. Everybody understands the stuggle of getting dinner on the table after a long day. Discount based off of product cost before shipping. "@type": "Article", A discussion of ham should also give some attention to ham hocks, also called shanks or sometimes pork knuckles. MyRecipes.com is part of the Allrecipes Food Group. Their nutty, sweet, funky flavor condenses over many months. (But if you want to splurge for some jamón ibérico, we would support that—the meat is darker with a more complex taste thanks to a very specific diet the pigs eat). Much more common are city hams, which can come bone-in, bone-out, or compressed into a tin or round shape. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. { Buying the right one can be the difference between needing to soak it for several days and being able to pop it right in the oven. Typically, you want the oven on a low temperature so the ham doesn’t dry out — especially if you’re fixing a boneless ham. If you're looking for a simple recipe to simplify your weeknight, you've come to the right place--easy dinners are our specialty. The exception to this is picnic ham, which is really not ham at all. Cured with salt and typically aged between one and two years, this Italian delicacy wants to be sliced paper-thin and eaten on its own. We source our products locally, and we ship them across the nation, so no matter where you are, you can enjoy a taste of Lancaster County. However, the meat on a shank end ham tends to be fattier and less tender than the meat you’ll find in a butt end ham. {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How Is Ham Made? A small portion of white fat should stand out in the centre (corresponding to the femoral vein). Your email address will not be published. Then it is smoked and aged. Country hams, such as those sold by Edwards in Virginia and Benton’s in Tennessee, are generally cured with a dry rub, like a prosciutto, and are hung to dry at a controlled temperature. “Mr. The oldest surviving book of Latin prose from the first century BC includes instructions for preparing ham, so it’s safe to say humankind, and especially Westerners, have enjoyed ham for a very long time. 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. For an easy supper that you can depend on, we picked out some of our tried-and-true favorites that have gotten us through even the busiest of days. You can then boil the ham to heat it, add your favorite glaze and finish it off in a hot oven.