Coomes - Country ham: a southern tradition of hogs, salt & smoke

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2014 by Steve Coomes

All rights reserved

All photos by author unless otherwise noted.

First published 2014

e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978.1.62584.823.9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coomes, Steve.

Country ham : a southern tradition of hogs, salt and smoke / Steve Coomes.

pages cm -- (American palate)

print edition ISBN 978-1-62619-330-7 (paperback)

1. Ham. 2. Cooking (Ham) I. Title.

TX749.5.H35C66 2014

641.364--dc23

2014016297

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ive heard would-be or actual authors say often, Ive got a book in me. I just need to get it out. Ive honestly never felt that waynever had a book in me or a desire just to get it out. As a journalist, my job is to tell other peoples stories, to chronicle their lives for others to enjoy. Their stories dont add up to a book in me because all Im doing is sharing the details of events experienced by someone else. I merely transfer the highlights to paper or the Internet or weave them into conversation.

Early on in the creation of this book, I decided that the stories of the people profiled were best left told by them, not reshaped by my limited skills or the indelicate tools of the trade. Any child of the South knows that books dont live up to the storytelling skills of a southerner. Even the best authors cant match a live storytellers emotions, voice inflections, expressions and cadence. To preserve as much of that as I could, Ive done my best to get out of the way and let them do the talking. I cant thank these people enough for taking the time to share their stories with me. Without them, there is no book.

I also must acknowledge so many others whove been instrumental in this effort:

To my wife, Leslie, and son, Kyle, for putting up with my irritability and extended absences for nearly a year. Im so looking forward to more date nights and evenings fishing together.

To my brother, Mark, whose thoughtful and skillful editing of this book taught me so much and made mop-up duty an easy chore for the team at The History Press. Thanks for your patient guidance and mentorship. Oh, and yours is next, so get on it.

To my mother, Mary Ann Thompson, who taught me that hard work is a good thing. This was hard, Mom, but it was good for me.

To my seventh-grade language arts teacher, Rosemary Newton, who praised an assignment of mine by reading it out loud to the class. That thirty-second compliment went a long way in a struggling students life. It has stuck with me for thirty-seven years.

To my English 102 professor (whose name I cant recall) at the University of Louisville, who told me, Youre a decent writer, but I dont think you can make a living at it. It bothered me some when you said it, but maybe I was just too stupid to believe you were right. I cant tell you how much fun its been proving you wrong for the past twenty-three years.

To Richard Lewis, who kept me laughing throughout the assembly of this work and cheered me on when it got tiring. I cant wait to see how our country hams turn out this fall.

To the many chefs and home cooks who shared their recipes.

To Nancy Newsom, for sending me that sample box of your exquisite country ham in 2009. Had your see-through, prosciutto-style slivers not triggered my personal pork epiphany, this book might never have been written.

And to Jesus Christ, my lord and savior. Please help me do a better job of telling your story.

INTRODUCTION

ITS ALL NANCYS FAULT

On a late January morning in 2013, the temperature inside my friends garage in Brooks, Kentucky, is eighteen degrees. Richard Lewis and I are rubbing a salt-and-sugar cure into the cracks, crevices and flesh folds of eight fresh hams. Our plastic gloves provide no protection from the finger-numbing chill, but Im not complaining. Professionals do this for hours at a time, hand-curing thousands of hams during a single shift, the first step in transforming those hindquarters into savory salt-cured meat.

A few weeks before Richard and I got our introduction to curing, Id traveled to Clifty Farm Country Meats in Paris, Tennessee, where employees cure 750,000 hams per year. The company uses plenty of machinery, but the basics of turning an ordinary ham into a Clifty creation differs little from this mornings old-fashioned work. Whether the operation is massive or small, the curers pros or rank amateurs, making country hams requires just three essentials: hogs, salt and smoke. Well, and time. Lots of time. Aged a minimum of six monthsmore commonly nine and increasingly twelve to twenty-four monthscountry ham arguably is the least hurried of all slow foods. By comparison, fermenting kimchi takes five days, sauerkraut one month and Chinese thousand-year eggs stay buried ninety days. Such waits seem like a trip to the vending machine compared to ham aging.

So, as we rub cure into our hams, its a little disheartening to think that well have to wait until the fall to learn if theyre any good, to see if I listened closely enough during the dozens of discussions I had with curers about this centuries-old craft. When we taste our hams in October, well know instantly whether were proud enough to share them with others. About six hours after that, our stomachs will let us know if we conquered bacteria in the battle to the bone. The odds are super long that our meat will wind up tainted with trichinosis, but if we lose, it wont be pretty. (Thankfully there are several pre-consumption safeguards for that.)

If the cure works and our hams are good, maybe the best part will be calling Nancy Newsom to celebrate. Newsomowner and curer at Col. Bill Newsoms Aged Kentucky Country Ham in Princeton, Kentuckyis a big reason why were here this morning, wrist deep in cure, working in this frigid, thin-skinned garage, when we should be busy with our day jobs, when we could be eating someone elses proven product or when we could read about others whove done it. But wheres the fun in that? Were trying it out for ourselves.

Heres why Newsom matters to this pork project. In 2009, I wrote an article about her traveling to Huelva, Spain, as a guest of that nations V Congreso Mundial del Jamn (Fifth World Congress of Ham). The country lady was a doubly novel attraction: the first American artisan invited to bring ham to the Congress, and a woman in a profession nearly exclusive to men. Newsoms homespun personality so charmed the Spaniards that, despite her unfamiliarity with their language, she was interviewed on national television. The Congreso even honored her by requesting that she leave one of her hams for display in their ham museum.

After the story ran, a UPS package from Newsom arrived at my door. The smiling driver knew well of its contents and promised, Oh, youre going to like this. This is really good ham.

Over my career writing about food, Id gotten unsolicited samples of beef, spices, tequila, beer, bourbon, cheeses and candy, but salty ham swag was a first. Inside was a thank-you note from Nancy and multiple vacuum-sealed slices of her aged ham. Jackpot!