The usual method of curing is to pack the pork in clean salt, adding
brine to the barrel when filled. But it may be dry-salted, by rubbing it
in thoroughly on every side of each piece, with a strong leather rubber
firmly secured to the palm of the right hand. The pieces are then thrown
into heaps and sprinkled with salt, and occasionally turned till cured;
or it may at once be packed in dry casks, which are rolled at times to
bring the salt into contact with every part.
Hams and shoulders may be cured in the same manner either dry or in
pickle, but with differently arranged materials. The following is a
good pickle for two hundred pounds: Take fourteen pounds of Turk's
Island salt; one-half pound of saltpetre; two quarts of molasses, or
four pounds of brown sugar; with water enough to dissolve them. Bring
the liquor to the scalding-point, and skim off all the impurities which
rise to the top. When cold, pour it upon the ham, which should be
perfectly cool, but not frozen, and closely packed; if not sufficient to
cover it, add pure water for this purpose. Some extensive packers of
choice hams add pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmegs, or mace and cloves.
The hams may remain six or eight weeks in this pickle, then should be
hung up in the smoke-house, with the small end down, and smoked from ten
to twenty days, according to the quantity of smoke. The fire should not
be near enough to heat the hams. In Holland and Westphalia, the fire is
made in the cellar, and the smoke carried by a flue into a cool, dry
chamber. This is, undoubtedly, the best mode of smoking. The hams should
at all times be dry and cool, or their flavor will suffer. Green
sugar-maple chips are best for smoke; next to them are hickory, sweet
birch, corn-cobs, white ash, or beech.
The smoke-house is the best place in which to keep hams until they are
wanted. If removed, they should be kept cool, dry, and free from flies.
A canvas cover for each, saturated with lime, which may be put on with a
whitewash brush, is a perfect protection against flies. When not to be
kept long, they may be packed in dry salt, or even in sweet brine,
without injury. A common method is to pack in dry oats, baked saw-dust,
etc.
The following is the method in most general use in several of the
Western States. The chine is taken out, as also the spare-ribs from
the shoulders, and the mouse-pieces and short-ribs, or griskins,
from the middlings. No acute angles should be left to shoulders or
hams. In salting up, all the meat, except the heads, joints, and
chines, and smaller pieces, is put into powdering-tubs--water-tight
half-hogsheads--or into large troughs, ten feet long and three or four
feet wide at the top, made of the poplar tree. The latter are much more
convenient for packing the meat in, and are easily caulked, if they
should crack so as to leak. The salting-tray--or box in which the meat
is to be salted, piece by piece, and from which each piece, as it is
salted, is to be transferred to the powdering-tub, or trough--must be
placed just so near the trough that the man standing between can
transfer the pieces from one to the other easily, and without wasting
the salt as they are lifted from the salting-box into the trough. The
salter stands on the off-side of the salting-box. The hams should be
salted first, the shoulders next, and the middlings last, which may be
piled up two feet above the top of the trough or tub. The joints will
thus in a short time be immersed in brine.
Measure into the salting-tray four measures of salt--a peck measure will
be found most convenient--and one measure of clean, dry, sifted ashes;
mix, and incorporate them well. The salter takes a ham into the tray,
rubs the skin, and the raw end with his composition, turns it over, and
packs the composition of salt and ashes on the fleshy side till it is at
least three-quarters of an inch deep all over it; and on the interior
lower part of the ham, which is covered with the skin, as much as will
lie on it. The man standing ready to transfer the pieces, deposits it
carefully, without disturbing the composition, with the skin-side down,
in the bottom of the trough. Each succeeding ham is then deposited, side
by side, so as to leave the least possible space unoccupied.
When the bottom is wholly covered, see that every visible part of this
layer of meat is covered with the composition of salt and ashes. Then
begin another layer, every piece being covered on the upper or fleshy
side three-quarters of an inch thick with the composition. When the
trough is filled, even full, in this way, with the joints, salt the
middlings with salt only, without the ashes, and pile them up on the
joints so that the liquified salt may pass from them into the trough.
Heads, joints, back bones, etc., receive salt only, and should not be
put in the trough with the large pieces.
Much slighter salting will preserve them, if they are salted upon loose
boards, so that the bloody brine from them can pass off. The joints and
middlings are to remain in and above the trough without being
re-handled, re-salted, or disturbed in any way, till they are to be hung
up to be smoked.
If the hogs do not weigh more than one hundred and fifty pounds, the
joints need not remain longer than five weeks in the pickle; if they
weigh two hundred, or upward, six or seven weeks are not too long. It is
better that they should stay in too long, rather than too short a time.
In three weeks, the joints, etc., may be hung up. Taking out of pickle,
and preparing for hanging up to smoke, are thus performed: Scrape off
the undissolved salt; if the directions have been followed, there will
be a considerable quantity on all the pieces not immersed in the brine;
this salt and the brine are all saved; the brine is boiled down, and the
dry composition given to stock, especially to hogs. Wash every piece in
lukewarm water, and with a rough towel clean off the salt and ashes.
Next, put the strings in to hang up. Set the pieces up edgewise, that
they may drain and dry. Every piece is then to be dipped into the
meat-paint, as it is termed, composed of warm--not hot--water and very
fine ashes, stirred together until they are of the consistence of thick
paint, and hang up to smoke. By being thus dipped, they receive a
coating which protects them from the fly, prevents dripping, and tends
to lessen all external injurious influences. Hang up the pieces while
yet moist with the paint, and smoke them well.