Homemade Sausage Making

This was a picnic and it's aged one year!
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Looks downright excellent! Beautiful colour! You deserve that drink in the picture! Not a country ham or prosciutto, but if want to refer to it by its Italian name it's "spalla cruda" and also famous in Parma. Give us some details on the process.

What a wonderful and satisfying project. The fat looks beautiful.

Beautiful!

Chris, the whole project started early last December. I bought and slaughtered a market hog and I wanted to make country ham from one picnic and one whole leg. I followed a youtube recipe from the University of Kentucky. The recipe was just salt and brown sugar. It wasn't until the hams were put up that I really started to question the no cure part? That has nagged at me up until yesterday when I cut into the picnic. Here is the link to the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwu6K4crHc
I packed the ham in the salt and brown sugar mixture and wrapped it in unwaxed parcel paper. I put it in a ham sock and hung it for 5 weeks to cure. After that time I removed the salt mixture, rinsed it and cold smoked it for about 6 hours per day for three days. It's been hanging in my meat shed since then.
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This is the curing. I had several pictures over the year of other sausages on my cooling rack with my hams hanging in the background, but photobucket has made those unavailable.

The two ways I've read to eat the country ham is to soak it, then cook it, then slice it real thin, or to slice it paper thin uncooked like I did. I'm not sure what to call this except Excellent! Man it was wonderful with some Rye crackers and Jaegermeister. I deserved the drink as I AM the "Master Hunter" Ha Ha.

I made my first Procuitto's last December. They were fairly small, about 17-18 pounds each. They came out fantastic..

I'm going to make about 60 pounds of Soppressata next week. As soon as they are done, I'm throwing 4 more green hams in again.

Looks fantastic Lou. I hope to put a couple more hams this winter too.

Looks very nice Lou you should be proud! And I am very impressed with way that the boned out ham turned out. When you first wrote that you boned out two of the four, I was afraid that that there woud be air pockets an spoilage, but you did a good job!

Are you going to use the same recipe for the soppressata, or trying something different?

I am sticking with the same soppressata recipe I used last time although I am going to cut the fat slightly.

I made Sopresatta and Pancetta last winter. They were a little too "perfumey" for my liking. I'm going to try again and this time I'm going to leave out the Cumin. I like the simple flavored meats. The only one I like that has a dominant flavor is Finnocchiano and it's the Fennel seed that I like the taste of. To me it reminds me of the Genoa type salami I've had before. Sometimes less is better.

I use straight black peppercorns, and salt and maybe a little red pepper flakes. That's it. Fennel goes in the cured italian sausage, but I don't use fennel when making the soppressata in beef middles.

Thanks Lou, I think I'll just do a simple sopressatta.