I look at those in Costco all the time and really want one.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:50 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I haven't had a real ham in so long... Now you've made me really want one. I wonder if I can persuade mr. hippybear that we could potentially eat ham for weeks and weeks.
posted by hippybear at 11:52 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm embarrassed how far into the summary I got before realizing this article was not attempting to use silly jargon to describe being a shortwave radio fan.
posted by neuracnu at 11:54 AM on January 7, 2022 [16 favorites]

The price tells me this is not a Bellota.
posted by rhizome at 11:55 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

We regularly buy prosciutto di parma or iberico ham. As insane as it sounds, it would be a savings and a value. We haven't done it though, because I'm pretty sure that trying to mind his own business next to 14+ pounds of prime ham would give our dog a nervous breakdown.

How much do we like ham? During a layover in Madrid, we were checking out the city. We saw a sign saying that El Museo del Jamón was just ahead. With only four hours to kill, we all immediately agreed to drop everything and spend the entire time in the ham museum. We were so disappointed to find out it was simply a small, whimsically named ham shop... we barely spent more than an hour there. Maybe 90 minutes, tops.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:55 AM on January 7, 2022 [48 favorites]

If I had one with pets in the house, I would use an upside-down aquarium to cover it when not being sliced. Something large enough and heavy, possibly with a rubber gasket to help prevent the smell from getting to their noses when I wasn't home. The glass maintains its display as a piece of art.

I've looked into getting a nice one from time to time, but you know what the stopper was? A class. There are specific techniques associated with this meat and specific ways of slicing it for a) thinness; and b) maximum yield, and it does not look easy! Perhaps practicing on a $99 leg is smart.

If you're ever in San Francisco, there's a restaurant in the Financial District called Bask that has a $25 Bellota appetizer that is one of my favorite food options in the city. It might sound expensive, but so's the meat, and if you're like me you'll be surprised at how much you get. The flavor is just beautifully intense and the plate can easily last an entire meal between two people.
posted by rhizome at 12:11 PM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

I'm embarrassed how far into the summary I got before realizing this article was not attempting to use silly jargon to describe being a shortwave radio fan.

do you mean ham radio?
posted by Dr. Twist at 12:11 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

I've seen both Dorothy Parker and Irma Rombauer as the alleged author of: Eternity is two people and a ham.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:12 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

This year we bought half a pig to go with our quarter cow (our annual meat purchase, lasts in a chest freezer about 12 months until we're done with it). The ham and bacon went right to the local smoker and were back just in time for Christmas. We had something like 11 people in the house for a week and I feel like we have more ham than we started with.
posted by true at 12:14 PM on January 7, 2022 [16 favorites]

This is metafilter gold.
posted by infini at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I know it's a different ham but I made myself a ham for Christmas. It was my first ham event with the new dog, a nine year old shelter rescue, and the way his eyes lit up when I gave him the first bite of warm ham fat...I don't think he had ever had ham before in his whole life. He's been forever changed by the experience.

A dog may be man's best friend but ham is a dog's best friend.
posted by phunniemee at 12:19 PM on January 7, 2022 [28 favorites]

The last time I visited Barcelona, I sorely wanted to buy a whole leg of jamon iberico, which you could get in some markets and grocery stores at that time of year (it was just before Christmas, and apparently they are popular gifts) at a price that's really not too unreasonable when you consider what the "street price" is for the stuff. They even sold it as a kit, with the jamon, the cutting stand, a special carving knife, even special ham tongs for moving the sliced bits onto a plate.

In the end I reluctantly declined to buy one, because I couldn't get a straight answer on whether you were allowed to bring it through US Customs. Some people swore up and down that it would be fine, that it qualifies as a "packaged" preserved meat just like biltong or beef jerky, but other people warned us that they knew of people who'd had their jamon confiscated by the TSA/Customs thugs. And I couldn't bear the thought of buying a whole Iberian ham and having to eat it like a gremin in the Customs waiting area, which is exactly what I'd have to do if I was told I couldn't bring it into the country. (And my heart probably couldn't handle the salt, not that I'd have asked its opinion.)

Sometimes I still regret that decision, because as it was, the Customs desk was closed when we made our trip back into the US. No inspection of any kind, of anything we brought back. No inspectors even present. So, goddamn it, I could have not just brought my entire jamon iberico with me, I could have brought an entire live Iberian pig and two kilos of cocaine and a few bottles of cava to boot. (And wouldn't that have been a party?)
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:30 PM on January 7, 2022 [42 favorites]

Lidl sells big-ass hams each Christmas season; this past year was no exception.

Not to be confused with Big-Ass Hams.
posted by delfin at 12:32 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

oh damn, I really need to go eat at Bask.
posted by supermedusa at 12:34 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

My grandparents had the typical hard scrable farmstead where they grew tobacco and they raised a few hogs.

They had a big old chest freezer by the time we grandchildren came along, but the hams were never frozen, so there were always a few country hams, that granddad seasoned and cured, hanging from the (tobacco) grading barn rafters.

Ham biscuits were standard table fare at their household. I cannot look at prosciutto and fail to think of it as glorified country ham; and subsequently miss those lazy summer days when we'd be shuffled off to their place for weeks.

It's a fascinating process to know how to properly cure a ham so it doesn't spoil, and I suppose my grandparents learned it as part of their traditional survival skills.
posted by mightshould at 12:37 PM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

Not to be confused with Big-Ass Hams

Ha! I'd forgotten that "product placement"!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:39 PM on January 7, 2022

I would totally buy one of these, but I think my kitchen stays too warm and I don't have a separate unheated area.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:48 PM on January 7, 2022

And I couldn't bear the thought of buying a whole Iberian ham and having to eat it like a gremin in the Customs waiting area, which is exactly what I'd have to do if I was told I couldn't bring it into the country.

HAM PARTY but now I want this.
posted by corb at 12:51 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I’ve been eyeing these at Costco for a couple of months. The last time I went for a few more things before my “Christmas party”, the woman behind me in line was getting one and on the phone with someone talking about how excited she was and what a great deal. “I’ve never seen this for less than $300!” She hung up and I said I was so jealous, I also wanted one but my party kept dwindling with omicron PLUS I know too many vegetarians, so it just wouldn’t get eaten (I love it but would be good for 8 ounces, tops, then I would get weird about it and just avoid it for a couple months, and it would just go to waste. I know myself). Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t buy one but I applaud anyone who did and is dedicated enough to eat it all.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 12:59 PM on January 7, 2022

Yes, you love ham, but do you love it enough to have a pet ham? I have visited Smithfield and seen it in person (even have a 3D-printed Christmas ornament of it!). A very good ham: 13/10.
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:02 PM on January 7, 2022

Another my grandparents had half of this and half of that and a garden outside and standard notice for visiting friends is to not clean your plate or granny will feed you more and don't worry about it the leftovers go into the compost pile for later and you almost never eat out and grocery shopping is more odds and ends. Sadly that missed my mother because I've stopped asking for a good bit of country ham and it's never quite right, same with pickled beets. Would I if I could have a chunk of ham hanging around sigh........

Everything's a pale imitation of granny's ham biscuits or just ham and green beans with a side of pickled beets.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:04 PM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Some friends of ours got one and hosted a ham party where all guests were encouraged to try carving, by which I mean each was made to carve to the point of frustration, and then the next would be pressed into service.

We recently overheard a couple shopping at Costco looking longingly at the ham, when one said "maybe after the wedding." My wife pointed out they could put it on their registry.
posted by fedward at 1:06 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

The last time I visited Barcelona, I sorely wanted to buy a whole leg of jamon iberico

I was once riding a bus through rural Szechuan, a long journey down from the mountains into Chengdu. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant in a small village in a steep mountain valley. Walking in the door shortly before our departure, a most wonderful smell hit me, lifting my eyes up to the rafters in which hung an incredible array of mouth watering smoked hams for sale. I spent a few minutes considering f I could carry a small specimen in my backpack as long as it would take me to eat it, but I eventually decided against it, thinking I would tire of the ham and end up lugging a rotting chunk of cured meat around. I'm not always the most practical person when it comes to bulk purchases of food and I thought I was being smart by overriding my instincts.

We all have regrets in life and this is one of mine.
posted by ssg at 1:06 PM on January 7, 2022 [20 favorites]

For the last 3 Christmases I've received one of these from a friend who gets it as a gift from customer and can't countenance eating it. So for about three weeks it's fat platters of thinly sliced ham at every meal. I just threw out the bone yesterday! And now I can go for at least a month without even looking at cured meats.

Como cortar jamón Ibérico
Pro Chef Learns How to Carve a $1,500 Leg of Ham | Bon Appétit
posted by chavenet at 1:08 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

This post is relevant to my interests. Here in Ireland, Aldi and Lidl regularly have specials on whole legs of jamon Iberico, but until we can have parties again, it's hard to justify getting one. Lately I've been hitting up the Chinese butchers, who sell basically every part of the pig, instead of just supermarket vacuum-packed pork chops. I cooked a great schweinshaxe the other day (cost: €3.50 for a ham hock the size of my head) and if I'm making stew I'll buy a leg bone (cost €0.75) chopped in half to get that marrowy goodness that really ties the stew together. Unfortunately where I grew up the pubs that used to serve crubeens (pig's feet) have pretty much all closed, but I'm sure there'll be a revival at some point.
posted by kersplunk at 1:09 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

Many years ago I worked for a TV studio that was one of Robert Abplanalp's pet projects; we were thus under his main factory's umbrella, and so we were entitled to the "Christmas bonus" all his other employees got - each one of us got a twelve-pound ham every year. This was no doubt well-received by the employees who had Christmas dinners for families to serve, but I was a 20-something single New Yorker who would be heading home to her parents' for Christmas (and my roommate laughingly pointed out that he was Jewish on top of that).

The first year it happened I stuck it in the fridge, figuring I'd figure out something to do with it eventually. But I was complaining about it over Christmas that year, and my aunt came up with what was ultimately a genius idea: "Just pick a random Saturday, cook it up, and throw a make-your-own-ham-sandwich open house party."

And for about five years after that, "Hamfest" (as my friends started calling it) became one of the big events on all our social calendars. I'd get about three kinds of bread, two kinds of mustard, lettuces, a few tomatoes, a few different kinds of sliced cheese, and one time I even made my own mayonnaise, and we'd open the doors at noon and go until about 6 that night and people would come and just sit around and eat. Sometimes at about 4, if it looked like we still had a lot of ham left, I'd whack a big hunk off it and make up a batch of jambalaya as well. It was such a hit that I kept the party going for two full years after I switched jobs by buying my own ham. (And one glorious year, at that next job, one of my bosses got a whole smoked turkey as a gift from a client that she didn't want and gave it to me - and I added it to the table; we called that year's event "HamFest, Now With Turkey".)

I actually kind of miss that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:48 PM on January 7, 2022 [39 favorites]

"Fine ham abounds, Mom."
THAT’S SOME GREAT FUCKING HAM

It was a little bit salty, thanks.
posted by MrBadExample at 2:04 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I went to a winter holiday party years ago, and I arrived to find the hosts arguing in the kitchen about how to carve the ham. They were confused by the diagram they had. I said "that is the butt end you have there." They said "what?" I said "a ham is basically the leg of a pig. It is generally cut into two parts, the shank, which is shown in your diagram, with mostly a single bone, and the butt, which contains extra hip bones. You can't cut a butt using a shank diagram. Oh, the shank is over there, waiting to go into the oven. See how it only has the one bone?" They looked at me in bewilderment. I said "Oh, for pity's sake, give me the knife! And I carved the butt and made it pretty on a platter, and they were happy, and I said "do you have any large freezer bags?" And they said "why?" And I said "for the bones." And they looked blank. And I said "you cook greens, don't you? You cook beans, don't you? Throw that carcass in there and make them better! Don't waste the pig; that is a mortal sin!"

It was a nice party. There was a very cute pug on display.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:20 PM on January 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

I've cured and smoked a small ham, and I'd love to be able to cure the whole thing like this. My dream kitchen/cookhouse/basement will have a fridge for curing meat, a fridge for sauces, a fridge for beverages, a fridge for brining, a fridge for fridging and another one also because I will fill up the first fridge by fridging.
Somehow my partner thinks he will be able to use these fridges, but he's wrong. He will need his own kitchen/cookhouse/basement/brewhouse with his own fridges.
posted by winesong at 2:37 PM on January 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

I am fond of cheap ham hocks. Cheap because the hock is a weight-bearing hind leg joint, the equivalent of our heel, full of bone and sinew. But as long as you cook them low and slow-- simmering, slow-roasting, braising or any combination of those-- you get that reaction where the connective tissue softens and they yield a decent amount of meat; enough to eat and have a few days' worth of leftovers (or a few months if you freeze them).

Things I have done to ham hocks include:

Soak, changing the water a few times; simmer in water; glaze; slow-roast covered for ages, then whack the temperature up and uncover for the last 45 minutes

Simmer in ginger ale with a quartered onion and 2 cloves; roast as above

Slow braise all day in a covered dish with white wine and spices, turning every hour and a half or so

Then the bone with the remaining scraps on it gets frozen and eventually goes to make soup beans. (Collards are harder to find in London). I used two for this year's hoppin' John, which turned out delicious.
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:45 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

Metafilter: There was a very cute pug on display.

I’m a little surprised we’ve gotten this far into a ham thread and nobody’s brought up Heathcliff yet.
posted by MrBadExample at 3:13 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

What you need in a situation like this is a SEVEN DAY HAM PLAN.
posted by mikeand1 at 3:18 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

hard to believe there are those who'd choose turkey for a festive meal

it's so good to find my ham people
posted by elkevelvet at 3:23 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I am fond of cheap ham hocks.

I used to cook red beans and rice pretty often, and my roommate would come home, peer into the pot and say “that is one ugly piece of meat.” I would ask if he wanted some, and he would always enthusiastically agree. I love ham hocks; they are a meat you cannot pretend that it didn’t come from an animal.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:35 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

SEVEN DAY HAM PLAN

I mean I like all forms of pork, but 21 ham-based meals in a row would be misery-inducing.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:39 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I am moving to the Land O Ham (southern Spain) and, although ham is not my favorite meat, I suspect I will adapt to some extent.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:53 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

21 ham-based meals

Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and sp
posted by howfar at 3:54 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

Wild Boar Prosciutto With Apple Saba, Arugula and Nasturtium.
posted by clavdivs at 3:59 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I eat meat. I often try hard to eat meat that is less obviously removed from the animal it came from. But, goddamn. I ate half a goat with six other people and still threw a significant part of it away. Nobody actually needs that much meat. And we refrigerated it and didn't even have to carve off the mold. This is some serious 1893 cosplay. But, I'm happy to have read it.
posted by eotvos at 4:01 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

In North Africa where I lived for many years, I had a friend who got really obsessed with those whole hams on his frequent visits to Spain. He eventually bought one, an extremely expensive jamon iberico, and brought it home with him. For religious reasons a very big taboo, so he had to smuggle it in and thereafter kept it in his garage, where his wife and in-laws could never, ever be permitted to see it. A select group of local friends-plus myself- would occasionally go and carve off pieces of it and drink beer in his garage with him on the down low.
posted by jackbrown at 4:30 PM on January 7, 2022 [14 favorites]

Had a country ham in my pantry a couple years back and that was delightful. Someone offered to grab me a jamón from Costco a bit ago but I wasn’t quite ready for that responsibility yet. Ham is a lot of work. Last year my father sent me a bone-in city ham which was lovely. That’s easier to deal with because you can carve it up and freeze it.
posted by misterpatrick at 4:31 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ham ham ham, bone.

I am seriously shocked. Beans? Really?!

ANYONE can smoke a ham!

But, can you pea soup?
posted by Goofyy at 4:46 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Oh god, if american country ham is Having A Moment like the article suggests, that would be excellent news. I have not had a proper ham biscuit in years.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:48 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

And to think that I've just been using my hams to make hot ham water
posted by lorddimwit at 5:22 PM on January 7, 2022

Parma ham is great, it really is, but damn, the first time I had a slice of coppa, it was life altering, sending me down a meat-rabbit-hole (that sounds terrible) from which I haven't really ever escaped. I make bacon, sausage, smoked hams (an entirely different beast) and all sorts of stuff, but anything cured and hung to dry is pretty much out of the question for me. For all the lovely hams strung up in rafters, the key is a certain ambient temperature (roughly 15-18C) and humidity (I forget, but it's higher than you'd think) that keeps the surface from drying out. The goal is the gradual loss of water from the meat, and if the outside dries up, it traps the water inside, and you get spoilage. Past that, there's curating "good" mold and avoiding "bad" mold, which, from all I've read is literally a question of luck at some point.

All of that, and there never a moment in lovely suburban greater metropolitan Tokyo where the temperature and the humidity line up. Homes here do not maintain anything like a steady indoor temperature, so we're at the mercy of the seasons. Winter is at once too cold and too dry, but summer is absurdly hot, and I don't really have room (or the electrical wiring know how) to set up a curing fridge. As much as I'd like to branch out into making my own salame, coppa, chorizo, and all the rest, it's just not going to happen. That's okay, though, because we can get most of the things I would want to make at, well, Costco.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:15 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

As with the concept of purna, so is ham. Subtract purna from purna, and purna still remains. Subtract ham from ham, and ham still remains.
posted by notoriety public at 8:58 PM on January 7, 2022

Norway has a twist on this. Instead of curing ham, we cure lamb meat.
posted by ymgve at 8:59 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Cured lamb leg sounds amazing, I need to try it
posted by Lycaste at 9:22 PM on January 7, 2022

My son is a 20 year old heavy equipment operator that lives on his own. He works 70+ hours per week and does little other than work and sleep. Needless to say he was taken aback last month when his company's Christmas gift arrived at his apartment: a full ham in a box. No ice or anything, just a gigantic, fully cooked, hermetically sealed, still somewhat frozen 17 pound ham bouncing loose in a cardboard box festooned with the company logo and a horse running through snow. There wasn't even a note.

I'm not sure the last time any of you were in the kitchen of a 20 year old male living alone, but it does not typically feature a roasting pan that could accommodate a meat beach ball, so we had him bring it home when he came for the holiday. We had a couple of the kids home this year so we were up to five for a while, but we can't be more than half way through it and this week only the youngest is left to help. We're doomed.
posted by Cris E at 9:52 PM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

We all have regrets in life and this is one of mine.

And I would like to give the counter-story. When you are walking past the cheese shop in the Netherlands, don't worry! Yes, you can and should buy a kilo or more of that super aged cheese. You will eat it all, it will not go bad, it is OK.
posted by Meatbomb at 12:07 AM on January 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

sending me down a meat-rabbit-hole (that sounds terrible)

Rabbit sounds pretty good, actually.
posted by atoxyl at 12:15 AM on January 8, 2022

I love ham and other kinds of preserved pork products, and articles like this make me swear at people living in temperate countries while I sit in my humid, tropical, everything-at-room-temperature-rots-immediately kitchen.

To make myself feel better I shall go eat a ton of mangoes.
posted by destrius at 1:36 AM on January 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

We recently overheard a couple shopping at Costco looking longingly at the ham, when one said "maybe after the wedding." My wife pointed out they could put it on their registry.

We did not have a registry, but we have friends who like to give wedding gifts that are both unwieldy and require outside assistance to use (basically ensuring that they get invited to future parties). The first couple to get married was gifted a Salamanzar of champagne (so, a full case of wine in one bottle that couldn't be resealed). We were given a whole Serrano ham and a meat slicer.

I've made my own prosciutto-style ham before, and it's not terribly hard to do a homemade version. It just requires a ton of salt and more fridge space than you're willing to devote (the method I discovered requires the meat be in the fridge while it's salting). And then you have to hang it for months and months. Two things I learned - I cut the ham off a whole pig, and my ham-fisted (yep) butchering left a lot of scraggly bits which were prone to contamination. I also would have hung it for maybe twice as long as I did, but I was getting impatient and I needed some of it for our Christmas party.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:50 AM on January 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Not sure how this didn't show up here.
posted by goofyfoot at 6:17 PM on January 10, 2022 [3 favorites]