The cured meats from the book have all been pretty successful and this one sounded nice and easy, plus would keep me in butties for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out because we don’t really cure lamb to make ‘ham’ do we? Unless I’ve been missing something all these years.
Anyway, here’s how to make to your spiced lamb ‘ham’:
First of all select your leg of lamb or mutton – you need one that weights about 6 pounds. Place it in a large pot or tub that has a well-fitting lid and rub it all over in a spiced salt mixture for curing. To make the spiced salt, mix together 4 ounces of dark brown sugar, 8 ounces of sea salt, ½ ounces of saltpetre, an ounce each of crushed black peppercorns and allspice berries, plus a heaped teaspoon of coriander seeds. Make sure you rub it in well, ensuring you get down between meat and bone. Keep it in the tub in a cool place and turn it over every day, rubbing in the juices and spices for 14 days.
Then, rinse any excess spices away from the surface of the leg and place in a large pot and cover with water. Bing slowly to a simmer and cook as gently as possible with the lid on for 3 ½ hours. Let the lamb cool in the water for a couple of hours, remove it and, wrap it in clingfilm or greaseproof paper and let it finish cooling under a weight. It keeps in the fridge for ages as long it is wrapped up or kept in Tupperware. Griggers says that if you have a smokehouse nearby that will let you put the cured but uncooked leg in, then do so! I haven’t, so I didn’t!
#243 Spiced Welsh Mutton ‘Ham’. This was a revelation! I do not know why we don’t cure mutton and lamb anymore. Absolutely delicious. The lamb meat was succulent and flaky just like corned beef and the spices cut through the richness of the fat. Best cured meat so far. 8.5/10
6 comments:
impressive rating! good recommendation, thank you, and good luck on your thesis.
Hey purejuice!
The blog will be back and running this month - I handed in my thesis today so there'll be recipes ap[lenty once more. Plus I have lots of other news, but I'll save that for a post in the next few days...
Neil
I want to try this.
I recommend it! I've cooked and cured many a meat and am much better at it. This recipe is something I keep meaning to revisit. Apparently it is cook when it is cold smoked after curing.
Hi again, I'm trying to organise making it but can't find saltpetre - only 'curing salt'. Will that also work and how would that change the recipe?
Thank you.
Hi Alice. it's hard to get salt petre but it is possible ebay is a good place to look. The pink curing salt works too - but I've never used it.
If I were to make this again, i would just use sea salt and add no saltpater at all. It gives the "ham" a nice colour but aside from that, it doesn't really do anytihng...
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