Why Country Ham Is the Best Meat for Preppers
Why Country Ham Is the Best Meat for Preppers
Meat that lasts nearly forever without refrigeration.
Pop quiz: would you eat this ham or throw it in the trash?
For most of us in the industrial “civilized” world, a big patch of mold triggers our inner alarm bells, and our first instinct is to toss it in the trash.
But you would be making an expensive mistake.
This isn’t some wet, slimy “city ham.” No, my friends, this is a salty, sturdy country ham, and it’s one of the few commonly available relics of a time before refrigeration was commonplace.
And yes, the ham in the picture is perfectly safe to eat. From the USDA:
Mold can often be found on country cured ham. Most of these are harmless but some molds can produce mycotoxins. Molds grow on hams during the long curing and drying process because the high salt and low temperatures do not inhibit these robust organisms. DO NOT DISCARD the ham. Wash it with hot water and scrub off the mold with a stiff vegetable brush.
They added the all-caps, not me. Do not discard the ham! It’s still good! It’s still good!
As you can see, that mold scrubs right off.
Country ham vs. city ham
Like I said, country hams are a relic of food preservation before refrigeration. In the old days, pretty much every farm had a smokehouse with boxes of salt. Pigs would be slaughtered and hung during cold weather, and then butchered and taken to the smokehouse for preservation.
Long story short: country hams are throughly immersed in salt, which draws out all the moisture, making them highly resistant to bacteria, mold, and insects. The ham is then usually (but not always) cold smoked, which means that it’s treated with wood smoke without additional heat applied.
The ham is then wrapped in paper and hung in a breathable cloth sack so any remaining moisture can evaporate from the ham. Hung in a cool, dry place free of insects, a country ham can lasts for years without refrigeration, which makes it a great long-term food storage option.
Pork works especially well for this sort of preservation because of their thick skins and the thick layer of fat, both of which protect the meat.
It’s perfectly normal for a little mold to accumulate on the outside of the ham, and is actually a sign of proper aging. Mold tendrils cannot penetrate the inner meat due the copious amounts of salt. So unlike bread, which is ruined by a spot of mold, you can simply scrub the mold off a ham and you’re good to go. (As Alton Brown says, “if you hung in a sack for 6 months you'd have mold too.”)
By contrast, a city ham—which is what most of us ham-eaters usually eat—is “wet cured” in a brine, which is why it comes out of the package all moist and slimy. City hams must be refrigerated and do not last nearly as long, but usually have a sweeter and less challenging flavor more likely to please a crowd.
Where to buy a country ham
Down here in the South, just about every small grocery store sells country ham, either whole or in slices. For the purposes of food preservation, you want a whole ham.
If you’re not fortunate enough to live in the South, you can order a ham online and have it shipped to your door. The gold standard is Clifty Farms, and you can buy a whole country ham from them for about $100.
Those of us of a certain age might remember the old Clifty Farms commercials with the late Hee-Haw sensation Grandpa Jones. Sadly, I can’t find any of Grandpa’s old Clifty Farm ads online, so you’ll have to settle for this ad for corn meal, which is a good example of his schtick.
When I was a kid, I found country ham gross, and I think a lot of my generation share or shared that revulsion. Every Christmas, we’d have this big, hard, moldy thing my parents would hack up and fry. Out of the pan, the slices were hard as a rock and salty as an ex-wife. I didn’t get the appeal.
But while many Americans would turn their nose up at a hard, moldy ham advertised by an old man in overalls, none would dare turn their nose up at an equally mold-crusted Spanish Jamon. They definitely wouldn’t turn their nose up at Italian prosciutto. Or a Chinese Jinhua ham.
Guess what? They’re all about the same thing. Preserving a hog’s leg in salt isn’t just a Southern tradition. It’s a worldwide practice.
Can you freeze a country ham?
The easiest way to process a country ham is to take it to a butcher shop and let them saw it into slices. If you don’t have a butcher shop, the butcher department at most grocery stores should be able to do it. I recommend scrubbing off all the mold first, because they may not know to do it.
You’ll get many slices of country ham, along with large chunks of the hock—the bony protrusion at the end of the ham.
Once country ham is sliced up, it can spoil, so keep slices in the fridge. Or better yet, put the slices in a freezer bag with a piece of wax paper between each slices. Stored this way, country ham can last for years. In fact, because of all the salt, the slices may not freeze at all, which makes it easy to retrieve when you need it.
As you pack up your ham slices for the freezer, I recommend examining each slides to make sure no mold developed in any gaps or crevices. You might want to throw those pieces away, if there are any, but I just cut it out, leaving about an inch of buffer to make sure I get it all.
How to slice a country ham without special equipment
But how do you process a ham if you don’t have access to a butcher or a meat bandsaw?
Use a hacksaw to cut off the hock. Set it aside.
Set the ham in a cooler and soak it in water for two days. Change the water twice per day. Set the cooler in a cool, dry place.
After two days, the ham should be soft enough to slice with a good, sharp butcher knife. The drawback of this method is that once the ham is soaked, it’s also perishable so you’ll have to refrigerate or freeze it and eat it ASAP. That’s hard to do because country ham is very strong.
Cooking country ham
I love “raw” country ham cut into thin slices just like prosciutto, maybe wrapped around some melon. Boomers and food-safety nerds are horrified by this, but the salt and smoke should be enough to purge the ham of any nasties. Carol Penn-Romine of Edible Memphis wrote:
At this year's convention of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, I listened to Ari Weinzweig, CEO of the legendary Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, MI, make the case for treating American country ham the same as Europe's beloved dry-cured pork. As he explained that a properly cured country ham is as safe to eat uncooked as prosciutto, jamon iberico or any of its European counterparts, the inevitable question of food safety arose. Nathalee Dupree, goddess of Southern cuisine, chimed in that trichinosis was conquered in the United States decades ago. It may be a non-issue among most culi-narians, but try convincing someone of this who grew up in the days of cremate-your-pork-or-die-an-icky-death.
In any case, the trick to eating country ham is thin slices or small pieces. Even if it’s been thoroughly soaked, it still has a very strong flavor. A little country ham goes a long way.
You can roast an entire country ham. I’m not a fan unless you’re feeding a lot of people at once because, again, a little country ham goes a long way.
In fact, I think the best way to consume country ham is to treat it like a seasoning. Throw a slice into a pot of beans or greens instead of salt. The ham add tremendous flavor, and if eaten this way, a country ham can last you years.
How to fry country ham
If you want to fry it, the trick is to soak the slices (assuming you didn’t soak before slicing) in a bowl of water for 5-10 minutes. This defrosts the slice, eliminates much of the excess salt, and makes the ham nice and juicy. Sear it on both sides, trim the chewy fat from the edges, slice it against the grain, and serve. It doesn’t need much cooking, which will dry out the ham and make it chewy.
Cooked country ham goes well:
On a biscuit
With breakfast foods like eggs. Use the pan drippings to make ham gravy. If you really want to be old-school country, throw some coffee in the pan to make red-eye gravy. I find it disgusting, but it’s a clever way to extract a little bit more from your ham.
With beans, greens, cornbread, and other Southern fixin’s
Country ham and cola
It’s a bit of a tradition to cook country ham in cola or Dr. Pepper. It sounds amazing, but I’m not a fan. It doesn’t add that much flavor to the ham, but it does make your pan a sticky mess that’ll force you to ruin your cast iron seasoning to get it off. Ideally, you want to cook eggs or gravy in the same pan after you cook ham, and you can’t do that if it’s a sticky, goopy mess.
Alton Brown has a recipe for roasting an entire country ham in Dr. Pepper. I love Alton, but don’t use that recipe. The one time I tried it the pan leaked and I was left with a thick layer of baked-on Dr. Pepper in the bottom of my oven.
To make matters worse, the Dr. Pepper doesn’t do much for the flavor of a whole country ham, since it won’t penetrate the thick rind. You end up with almost no Dr. Pepper flavor.
If you really want that ham and cola flavor, buy some SodaStream syrup and drizzle a bit on a hot slice of ham.