What to do with a Fresh Ham

I'm not the only person googling for a fresh ham recipe, but most of the recipes I found don't turn out like a smoked ham. I learned the hard way that you have to smoke the ham if you want it to taste like something for Sunday dinner.

I ordered our ham from the butcher and thought fresh was fine. It was not fine. Fresh hams and fresh ham steaks are nothing like what we know. If you cook a fresh ham steak in the oven, it turns out white and tough. Don't do it.

This is what I do:

Ingredients

• 1 Cup of non-iodized salt (I think I've used iodized salt in a pinch).
• 1 cup of sugar (brown sugar is good for this too)
• 1 Gallon of water
• You want to make enough brine to submerge the ham. You might need two gallons of brine.

Instructions

• Combine ingredients in a saucepan, and cook on low until sugar and salt are dissolved.
• Let it cool.
• Pour brine over ham until brine covers it.
• Cover with lid or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 days.
• Smoke the ham on a grill with the temperature at 275 degrees until the ham steak reaches 150 or so degrees. I use charcoal so the temperature fluctuates a bit. 

Tips

• You can cut the ham down to make it smaller if you want it to cook faster or need to fit it in a smaller grill.
• I recommend buying or borrowing an electric smoker if you are smoking a ham this way. That way you can set it up and forget it.
• If you are ordering a hog, at the very least get it cut in half. A whole ham is enormous.

(The picture below is my Weber grill set up to smoke some pork belly from that same hog.)