I couldn’t have imagined when I started this process, that a wild hog (even for me, a consummate fan of all things related to eating wild game) could have become such phenomenally flavorful and savory ham. It all started with the kill, naturally, and his was no ordinary wild hog. As good as your average hog is, this one was the stuff of dreams: a huge sow, fattened on a diet of a local farmer’s sorghum crop, and putting on weight before bearing a litter of bacon seeds. I spotted the sounder to which she belonged enter the field from a distant CRP pasture, and began a 500 yard stalk with the AR. Mind you, at this point I’d been on a dry streak with the hogs, and I decided to give the bow a break and bring down the thunder since I had a mad hankering for wild pork! I kept the wind in my face, and when she looked my direction to try to finally determine what I was, I was 20 yards away and had the drop on her – goodnight Ms. Piggie!
I took her home, where she weighed out at 180 pounds, and got to work from there. However, upon butchering her, I discovered just how noticeable the difference was between this pig and the countless others I had killed. Her fat levels were through the roof, and even her strip loin was laced with fat veins!
Truly, if there were such a thing as wagyu pork, this pig would have qualified as such. Needless to say, I was excited! My buddy David had told me about how delicious his first pass at making ham out of wild hogs had gone, so I decided to borrow my brine formula I use for corned beef, and get to it. For the brine recipe, scroll down to the bottom of this post!
After 10 days of soaking in the brine, all that remained was around 10 hours of mesquite smoke, beginning at 160 degrees, and building up to 260 degrees for the final stretch. The idea here is to warm the center of the ham while the outside is absorbing smoke, but not so rapidly that you end up completely drying out the exterior of the ham and making a bark that’s too chewy and bitter.
Wild Hog Ham
Equipment
- Pellet Smoker or Smokehouse
- Stock Pot
- Plastic Turkey Oven Bags
Ingredients
- 1 deboned, cleaned wild hog hind leg
- 1 gallon water
- 2/3 cup kosher salt
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar packed
- 1/4 cup pickling spices
- 4 tsp pink curing salt
- 1 tbsp minced garlic
- 1 pack powdered gelatin
Instructions
- Carefully and cleanly remove the femur from the hindquarter. Then, looking at the now-deboned meat layed out on your cutting board, remove any arteries, glands, connective tissues, and excess fat (a little remaining is ok). Basically, you want to see almost exclusively lean meat by the time you're done.
- Heat water after adding salt, curing salt, sugar, pickling spices and simmer until all salt and sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool to room temperature.
- Place meat in a large plastic turkey oven bag, and then add all of the brine solution to the bag also. Remove air from the bag, twist the top, and then clip the twist with a potato chip clip. Place the bag in some sort of plastic tub to protect against any possible leaks during curing process, and keep refrigerated for ten days.
- After ten days, remove meat from brine and spray off meat thoroughly. Pat dry on a cutting board, and sprinkle one bag of powdered gelatin to what will be the interior of the ham (where you removed the femur). This will promote adhesion and act like a glue that will help keep the various muscle groups sticking together into a nice finished product.
- Tie up with butchers twine and smoke in a smoke house or with a pellet smoker for 10 hours over mesquite. Starting temperature should be around 160F, with temps increasing by about 15 degrees per hour up to 260 degrees, then kept there until internal temperature reads 155F.
- Remove ham from smoker, immediately immerse ham in ice bath for 20 minutes to stop the cooking process, pat dry, and either rest for 24 hours or start slicing!
