How to Smoke a Ham

Guide Note

Sick of traditional glazed ham recipes? Smoking ordinary, grocery store ham is an easy process which will bring out rich, new flavors for holiday banquets or day-to-day meals. Smoking raw ham is a long and involved process, but you can smoke a ham purchased from the supermarket in just one day. This article will show you how!

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Step 1: Ham Preparation
  • Supermarket Hams
  • Cure Your Own
• Step 2: Wood Chip Preparation
• Step 3: Start Smoking
• Tips for Smoking Ham
• Additional Recipes
• References for How to Smoke Ham

How to Smoke Ham Tips

1. You can use a store-bought ham, or prepare one yourself.
2. Preparing a fresh ham for smoking can take weeks, even months.
3. Try mixing up wood chips with various fruit woods to change up the flavor.
4. Soak your wood chips in cold water for an hour beforehand so they will smoke as efficiently as possible.
5. Keeping a pan full of spiced water in the grill while smoking can infuse your ham with even more flavor.

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Introduction

• Smoked ham is a traditional American meal. Especially popular during Christmas and Easter, it has a distinctly salty flavor and is delicious when served either hot or cold.¹ What most people do not know, however, is that the traditional ham that most families enjoy during this time is created over the course of several months, in a long and involved process.²

• If you want to smoke a traditional ham from a fresh ham, you have to commit yourself to at least many months of work.³ Alternately, you can purchase a cured and brined ham from the supermarket and smoke it to add flavor.⁴ This article will show you how to do the latter.

Step 1: Prepare the Ham

• Traditional ham starts out as a pork roast, cut from the rear leg of a hog.² The process through which a fresh cut of pork roast becomes a traditional ham is called curing, and can take up to many months to complete.

Supermarket Hams

(Creative Commons photo by Buck)

• Hams purchased from the supermarket are wet- or brine-cured.⁵

1. They have been injected with a chemical brine composed of salt and sugar, water, flavorings as well as various chemical preservatives.⁶
   • - Common preservatives found in brine-cured hams include sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, sodium erythorbate, sodium phosphate and potassium chloride.⁵
2. They typically come pre-cooked, either boiled or lightly smoked before being sold in supermarkets.⁷
3. Some supermarket hams are marked as "partially-cooked," which means that it has been heat-treated to eliminate harmful bacteria, but is not ready to eat right out of the package.⁸

Curing Ham Yourself

• If you've got a fresh cut of pork roast that has not yet been cured in any way, you'll cure the roast into a ham before you can begin smoking. The process can take up to a few months, but is a good idea if you're concerned about the manufacturing processes and extra additives in many supermarket hams.⁹

• Brine-Curing
• Brine-curing your fresh roast is a relatively quick, but somewhat involved process that soaks the ham in a preservative solution. The general steps for brine-curing a ham involve:¹⁰

1. Prepare a brine with water, salt, sugar, pickling salt, desired spices and a curing powder such as Prague Powder #1¹¹
2. Mix the brine in a large container that will fit your cut of meat. 1 gallon of brine should be enough to cure roughly 10 pounds of meat.¹²
3. Keep the brine between 38 and 40 degrees F, and let the ham soak anywhere between 4 to 7 days.^{12 10}
   • - If you want to speed up the brining process, you can also inject your brining solution into the ham, making sure to inject it around the central bone in the ham.¹³

• Dry-Curing
• Dry-cured hams are also known as country hams.¹⁴ They are preserved through a long, slow process that draws moisture out, and produces a saltier, more flavorful meat.¹⁵ The general steps for dry-curing your own country ham are:

1. Prepare a curing mixture containing salt, sugar, saltpeter and any spices that you'd like to add to the flavor.¹⁶
2. Work the mixture thoroughly into all lean portions of the ham, and coat all the skin and fatty surfaces as well.¹⁷
3. Store the ham by hanging it in an area with plenty of ventilation. Avoid basements and cellars, where the air will be too moist.¹⁶
4. Let the ham cure for approximately 1 1/2 days per pound, at a temperature between 36 - 40 degrees F.¹⁸

Step 2: Prepare Wood Chips

The smoky flavor will be infused into your ham by exposing it to smoke from smoldering wood chips beneath it.¹⁹ But in order to get a good smoky fire going, you cannot simply throw wood chips onto the grill. To properly prepare wood chips:

1. Use dried wood chips, and avoid resinous woods from any variety of evergreen trees.²⁰
2. Soak a portion of the wood chips in cold water for about an hour so that they will smolder-- rather than burn up immediately-- when placed on hot coals.²¹
3. Keep the remaining dry chips on hand. Add them onto the pile later as the first batch of chips burns out and stops smoking.²²

Step 3: Start Smoking

• The ham should be placed in a on a grill, or some other tightly-confined space so smoke will penetrate the meat.¹⁴

1. 

   (Creative Commons photo by Dennis N. Atlanta)
   Start up the grill that will heat your wood chips until they produce smoke.
2. Get the grill heated to between 220 or 250 degrees F.²³ Keep this temperature as consistent as possible.
3. Put the wet wood chips onto the now-heated coals, and place the ham on the grill with the lean portions facing down.²⁴
4. Once smoke starts flowing from the wood chips, shut the lid and let it vent out slowly.²⁵
   • - Check to make sure the wood chips do not catch on fire. If they do, make sure to wipe the black soot from the surface of the ham.²⁴
5. Let the ham cook until the internal temperature reaches between 160 and 175 degrees F.²³
   • - Depending upon the size of the ham, smoking time may vary. Smaller cuts may only need 5 to 6 hours of smoke time, while larger ones might need 8 to 15.^{25 24}

• • When the ham has finished smoking, let it ham cool for approximately 30 minutes before you start cutting it into edible portions.²⁵
    • - In the refrigerator, the ham will stay fresh for up to a few weeks.¹² If you're freezing the leftovers, make sure to use them within 6 to 8 months.²⁴

Tips for Smoking Ham

1. Do not wrap the ham in aluminum foil; this will only prevent smoke flavor from penetrating the meat.²⁶
2. Your choice of wood chips will affect the flavor infused into the ham. Although mesquite chips are a popular choice, you can also experiment by mixing in fruit woods such as apple and pear.²⁴
3. If you're concerned about making a mess with charred wood chips, use aluminum foil to fashion smoking pouches:²¹
   1. Lay wet wood chips on a sheet of aluminum foil.
   2. Cover with another sheet of foil, and curl the edges together to form a tight seal.
   3. Cut slits or punch holes in the top sheet, through which smoke will escape.
   4. Rest these pouches in the coals of your grill, and replace them with fresh pouches when the wrapped-up chips stop smoking.²¹
4. Make sure you always have steam during the smoking process.²⁶ You can even add water in a pan at the bottom of the grill.²⁶
   • -Adding wine or vinegar to the water adds to the taste and tenderness of the ham.²⁶

Smoked Ham Recipes

• Try smoking your ham using one of the recipes below:

• • Chow.com: Double Smoked Ham
  • Epicurious: Baked Smoked Ham with Mango 
  • Epicurious: Smoked Ham with Sweet Country Mustard Sauce 
  • Food Network: Glazed Smoked Ham 
  • Smoker Cooking: Easy Smoked Ham 
  • Recipe Zaar: Honey Smoked Ham
  • Recipe Zaar: Hickory Smoked Ham

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References for How to Smoke Ham

1. ↑ About.com: Barbecues & Grilling: Ham 
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Professor's House: Ham Trivia and Interesting Facts 
3. ↑ U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service: Ham and Food Safety
4. ↑ Google Books: The Quick and Easy Art of Smoking Food (p.81)
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service: Ham and Food Safety - Wet Curing or Brine Curing
6. ↑ Guardian.co.uk: Ham from the supermarket may be more - and less - than it seems (November 3, 2005)
7. ↑ Cook's Thesaurus: Ham
8. ↑ Practically Edible: Brine-Cured Ham
9. ↑ ThePost.ie: Supermarket Secrets #14 - Fancy a quick ham sandwich? Read this first. (May 6, 2007)
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1} Sugar Mountain Farm: How to Brine a Ham April 16, 2006)
11. ↑ Jack Schmidling Productions, Inc.: Sausage Making - Cures
12. ↑ ^{12.0 12.1 12.2} Jack Schmidling Productions, Inc.: Ham, making at home - The Brine
13. ↑ Dizzy Pig BBQ Recipes: Home Cured Ham Recipe
14. ↑ ^{14.0 14.1} In The Kitchen: Country Ham
15. ↑ U.S. Food Safety Inspection Service: Ham and Food Safety - Dry Curing
16. ↑ ^{16.0 16.1} University of Missouri Extension: Country Curing Hams
17. ↑ Virginia Cooperative Extension: Dry-Curing Virginia Style Ham - Cure Applications
18. ↑ Virginia Cooperative Extension: Dry-Curing Virginia Style Ham - Cure the Proper Length of Time
19. ↑ U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service: Ham and Food Safety - Smoking and Smoke Flavoring
20. ↑ University of Missouri Extension: Country Curing Hams
21. ↑ ^{21.0 21.1 21.2} Food Network Canada: Rotisserie Ham Recipe
22. ↑ Hitech Red Neck: Country Smoked Ham
23. ↑ ^{23.0 23.1} Danny's Barbecue: How to Smoke Pork - Fresh Ham
24. ↑ ^{24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4} Barbecue'n on the Internet: Hot Smoked Ham 
25. ↑ ^{25.0 25.1 25.2} The BBQ Blog: Smoked Fresh ham (March 27, 2005)
26. ↑ ^{26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3} Ask the Meat Man: How to Smoke a Fresh Pork Ham