Pro Staff Article - "The Christmas Ham"

"The Christmas Ham"

"The Christmas Ham"

We were in charge of preparing the meat for Christmas dinner. It was cold as the breath of a dead Polar Bear, and I wanted to smoke a ham. In Cache Valley, we are blessed with a small, customer friendly meat processing facility, where I can go in and get exactly what I want - usually. The reason I say usually is that you do need to go there on the right day to get the right product. Well, I strolled into the meat processing plant - one of my favorite shopping spots (the others being hardware and western stores) - to buy an uncooked, unsmoked, and uncured ham. I basically wanted a big piece of pork to smoke, but I was a day late. The hams had all been injected with Ricky's special cure. I wasn't happy that the meat was already cured, but both Ricky and my wife (who is generally the mastermind of every meal I have a part in) assured me that it would be okay. Okay might be okay, but it is not what any of us who love to prepare special food items strive for. We want words like fantastic, unbelievable, extraordinary, and (my favorite) out of this world! As I was leaving, Ricky said to smoke the ham until the internal temperature of the ham was at least 150 degrees F. We took our 28 pound piece of cured meat home and rubbed the entire thing in my basic pork rub (proportions below were calculated for the huge, 28-pound ham): 1 cup of Durkee's Grill Sensations "Citrus Rub" 3 cups of brown sugar 1/2 cup of salt 2 tablespoons of smoked paprika 4 teaspoons of course black pepper After rubbing my future Christmas meal, I removed most of the racks from the smoker and placed the ham gently into the chamber. Did I mention that "unseasonably cold" would have been an understatement? I cranked up my Camp Chef Smoker and walked away. Well, sort of walked away. I did put a new supply of wood chips and chunks in about every four hours except between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. for the next 25 or so hours, and the smoker temperature hovered consistently just below 300 degrees. Okay, so I smoked a giant ham for a long time. Big deal! How was it? It was perfect! When dinner was done, there was not a scrap of ham left to take home, and there was not one person who said it was "okay," but a lot of those other words were used. What made it so good? First, a great piece of meat – you can't beat FRESH meat. Second, the injection was done by someone who knew what he was doing. And last, but certainly not least, S-L-O-W smoking. Try it. You will definitely like it. Big Joe