Starting the Proscuitto Process

[Waltz]

Inspired by ExpatCanadians 'First Ham time' post, and others, I have made the leap to attempt a Proscuitto cure on a whole pork leg.

I have had some success with Coppa, ox tongue, bacon and other cured meats and thought why not Proscuitto.
I am following a mixture of recipes I have read up on and started last weekend by rubbing fine sea salt on the leg, taking care to rub salt into the cavity at the ball joint end of the femur.  I also asked the butcher to leave the trotter on as I felt it probably removes one source of 'bone sour' if the foot end of the leg is not cut off. It looked like this afterwards:

I left it for two days, checking every so often and adding more salt if it looked like it needed it.
After two days it looked like this:

You can see that some liquid has come out of the meat.

The traditional method uses a dry cure throughout the process however I feel more confident with brining so I made up a brine with salt, sugar, saltpeter, rosemary, sage, juniper berries and peppercorns and placed the leg in this:


The brine only just covers the meat so I will need to turn it over every day or so but it will stay in the bath of brine, weighted down with the case of canned beans you see in one of the pictures, for about 20 days.
I will let you know how it looks after that. wish me luck I may need it :)

[devo]

Good Luck and nice little project you got going.

[ExpatCanadian]

Wow...  I'm thrilled to have inspired someone!!  I hope my initial success was not beginners luck and that I haven't lead you astray  ;D ;D ;D  Seriously though I will be following your process really closely, as I am considering using the Dry/Wet method myself on one of my next hams.  I've been reading a lot in Jane Grigson's book (Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery) and many of the Ham recipes in there follow the method of dry cure first then immersion in a brine to finish.

My only concern with this method is will this adversely affect the drying process...  especially if the intention is to dry for 10-12 months for Prosciutto?  I know the real-deal Parma hams are dry cured only before drying and aging.

I'm actually panicking a bit as I need to figure out exactly what I am doing as I have 2 more legs arriving tomorrow, one bone-in and one tunnel boned.

[Waltz]

Hi ExpatCanadian,
Don't worry, I won't place any blame on you if my ham is not a success :) Yours looked so good I had to give it a try.
I turned mine over after two days in the brine. It is going a bit darker in colour from being in the brine and the weight I have it under is flattening it a bit but not much else visible happening.

I got mine with the bone in for my first attempt as I had read that the cavity left behind when the bone is removed can be a source of contamination unless you salt it very carefully. It will make it much easier to carve with the bone removed so, depending on how this one goes, I may try that in future.
I have brined and air-dried coppa in the past and it worked OK so I am hoping brineing will also work for a full ham. I feel it is easier to get a uniform penetration of cure into the meat if it is immersed in brine rather than rubbing the cure on the outside.

Please let us know how your future attempts progress, good luck with them anyway.

[Waltz]

I took my ham out of the brine today.
It has taken on a nice brown colour and flattened out a bit from being weighted down:


I don't think I am going to smoke it. The meat is so thick and mostly covered with skin so probably would not take much smoke flavour into the main part of the meat.
I will let it hang for a few days for the surface moisture to dry off then coat the exposed flesh with a mixture of lard, paprika and pepper. Then the long wait begins.