The Easter Ham

Easter 2020 was set to be an unusual one. With the Covid-19 pandemic in full swing, the traditional Easter celebrations were not going to happen. Regardless of the state of humanity at the time, my wife still wanted an Easter ham, so she conjured up what she thought was a great idea. “You should smoke a raw, fresh ham for Easter.”  I had never smoked a raw ham before, so why the heck not?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a raw ham from the local grocery store.  Plus, if i was going to do this, I was going to do it with the freshest ingredients I could find.  At that moment, from the deepest depths of my mind, I remembered a little building in Des Moines that I passed numerous times on the way to a project site.  It has a picture of a pig on the side of it and the words Berkwood Farms.  

I did a little research online, then gave them a call to see if I could get a ham.  They informed me that a whole ham is around 20 pounds at $3.00 per pound.  OK, I really didn’t know what I was doing, so what else would I say. If I ordered it by noon on Monday, I could pick it up on Tuesday.  I don’t think I need to tell you what happens Monday afternoon, but let’s just say you can’t get a ham any fresher than this.   I talked to Jason from Berkwood Farms about what I was planning and asked for some advice.  He told me that I need to inject and brine because a ham can easily dry out and gets really chewy if you don’t.  I ordered my ham the Monday before Easter and was told the pigs have been big lately and my ham will likely be 25 pounds.  I picked up my 26.4 pound ham on Tuesday after work, and got started researching recipes and methods.

The Google and Pinterest were full of ideas, recipes, and methods for smoking fresh, raw ham.  I don’t think I found any two recipes that were the same, and all of them were widely varied.  Some called for a brine, some called for injections, some called for a rub, some called for any combination of the three.  Cooking times and temperatures varied wildly.    In the end, I combined several recipes to develop my approach to the epic smoke.  Here’s the summary: injection, brine, rub, smoke, glaze, cook.

Research and Preparation

I started the process on Thursday evening with the plan to smoke on Saturday.  Based on my research, with the smoker at 225 degrees, the ham should take 30 to 45 minutes per pound to cook to the desired meat temperature.  That would be a 15 to 20 hour smoke for me.

I heeded Jason’s advice and decided to inject and brine the ham.  I chose to use a simple brine just to provide moisture.  I was planning to glaze the ham and figured most of my flavor would come from that process.  Since this was a big piece of meat, I made a lot of brine.

My sous chef, Ben, helped me warm the water on the stove and added the salt and sugar, stirring until it all dissolved.  Once everything dissolved, we removed the pot from the heat and stirred in the ice to bring the temp down to around 50 degrees.

My ham didn’t have any skin on it.  I didn’t ask for it with or without, it just came that way.  I was glad it was skinless, because I didn’t have to wrestle with it.  While sous chef Ben was making the brine, I cut the excess fat off the ham.  I know, I know, there is flavor in the fat, but this piece of pig had a good 3/4” layer of fat.  That seemed excessive, so I cut much of it off.  I made sure to leave enough to give me that yummy pig flavor.

With the excess fat gone and the brine ready, Ben and I began injecting.  We injected the ham in a dozen or so places.  We tried to put a fair amount of injection near the bone because the heat will transfer through the bone to the inside of the ham and dry that area out more quickly than the meaty part of the ham.  As a side note, Ben got a kick out of the brine squirting out of other injection holes when trying to add injection to other areas.  Once I felt like I ran out of places to inject, we put the ham in a giant ziploc and poured the remaining brine in the bag.  I think we used around a third of the brine as injection.  The ziploc went into the fridge so the brine could do its work.

Friday morning, I flipped the ham in the bag so the brine could work on the other side.  I flipped it again Friday evening and left it overnight.  Lesson learned: the bags were not a great choice.  The first one leaked so I put it in a second one.  The second one leaked as well.  Next time, I’ll find a big aluminum pan, hotel pan, or food grade bucket to do my brining.

Side story: I used to have an offset smoker that my neighbor gave me when he moved because he ran out of room on the truck.  I used that for a couple years, but got tired of how much babysitting it took.  I wanted something that required attention, for the sport of it, but not constant attention.  I have kids that can fulfill any desire I have to give something constant attention.  One day I made pulled pork in the slow cooker.  I set it in the morning and come home to it ready to eat.  It was delicious, but there was no smoke flavor.  At that moment, I decided I needed a pellet smoker.

Readying the Ham For Smoking

Saturday morning, time to get the ham ready for the big smoke.  I pulled it from the brine, patted it dry with paper towels, and set it on the counter in a cookie sheet to let it start warming up to room temp.  In the meantime, I made my rub.  This was a game time decision.  Initially, I was not planning to rub the ham.  I was going to let the glaze provide all of the flavor.  I decided on a simple sweet rub made primarily of brown sugar. I figured this would start to impart some sweet with the smoke deep into the meat.

I cut a diamond pattern into the surface of the ham, about a 1/4” deep.  This would open up the meat, again allowing more flavor to work its way into the muscle.  It also resulted in more surface area for the rub to adhere to.  Then I hit it with the rub.  Finally, I pushed a whole clove into the ham at each location where my cuts crossed.  I did this on both sides of the ham even though one side will clearly be the “top” during smoking. At this point, I let the ham sit out for a couple hours so the salt in the rub could work its magic.  The salt in the rub pulled the moisture out of the meat, combined with the other elements of the rub, then pulled it all back into the meat.  That’s why a good rub is important for any recipe.

Preparing the Smoker

 While the ham marinated in its own juices, it was time to  prepare the smoker.  I have a Pit Boss Vertical Smoker, Pro Series 5.  I gave it a good cleaning and replaced the previous pellets.  I removed the apple pellets from the hopper, and replaced them with a combination of 20 pounds of cherry pellets and 10 pounds of pecan pellets.  I typically use Lumber Jack brand grilling pellets.  As I understand it, they have their own sustainable forests which they get their wood from.  The pellets are all wood, no fiber fill.  They also include the bark in their formula.  This causes the pellets to burn a little bit hotter and faster, but it provides more smoke and more smoke flavor.

I filled the smoker’s water pan with water.  The water keeps the humidity up in the smoker which is important to keep the meat moist.  Since this will be such a long smoke, I added a drip pan with water on the lowest rack. I thought that maybe I could use the drippings to create a gravy.  In the end, the gravy idea didn’t work, but I was able to collect some Au Jus later in the process. Some of the recipes I found called for apple cider, apple juice, beer and other liquids in the drip pan.  Additional research revealed that the liquid in the drip pan doesn’t really add any flavor to the meat, so water is all that is needed.  It was highly recommended to keep the apple juice for spritzing, if that is part of your process, and keep the beer for drinking.

As the ham continued to stew, I started the smoker at 350° for 15 to 20 minutes.  This lets it warm up and burn off any remains  of the previous smoke session.  Next, I turned the dial down to 225° and let the smoker settle in at that temperature.

Time for Smokin’

With the water pan full , the pellet hopper full,  the smoker to temp and the  ham prepared, it  was  time to put it in the chamber and let the smoker do its work. I set the smoker to 225 degrees.  After 10 or 11 hours, the ham was sitting at 140°.  At that time, I raised the cooking temperature to 350° and applied the first layer of glaze. I applied a layer of glaze at 145°, 150 °, 155°, and 160°.  By 11:00 pm, 13 hours after starting, the ham reached 165 °. 

I pulled the ham from the smoker and put it in a foil pan.  After letting it sit for 10 to 15 minutes, I had to have a taste.  The surface was crusty and had the sweetness from the glaze and rub, and the flavor from the whisky was subtle, but present.  I could pick up citrus from the orange peels in the marmalade, and the cloves gave the classic holiday flavor to the ham.  I made sure to remove the cloves because a bite into one of those will destroy your taste buds for about 10 minutes.  It definitely wasn’t as salty as a cured ham you would buy from the store,  however, there was enough salt flavor from the injection and rub to satisfy my palate. 

Since we wouldn’t be eating it until noon the next day, I covered it with foil and put it in a cooler packed with towels. I made sure not to use my best towels unless I wanted to sleep on the couch next to my ham.

Sunday after church I pulled the ham from the cooler and it was still warm and juicy.  The foil pan collected a super flavorful Au Jus that had all of the flavors described above.  Unfortunately, the time spent covered in the pan softened the crust.  It still had all the flavor, but it lacked the crispiness that a good crust should have.  Now that I know how long it takes, next time I’ll time it to be done closer to dinner.  I think it is still important to let it rest for an hour or so after cooking and before eating.  In that scenario, I would tent the ham with foil to keep it from cooling too fast, but also allow the vapor somewhere to go rather than back on the meat, thus protecting the crust. 

The Big Moment

For Easter lunch, we served it with cheesy potatoes, green beans from my mother’s garden, and deviled eggs from a friend. Everyone gobbled it up.  On Monday we enjoyed some creamed ham over biscuits, and Tuesday we had scalloped ham and potatoes.  We still have 3+ pounds in the freezer for future use.

The Lessons I Learned

Size: This ham was huge.   It was touching the back of the smoker, so some of it burned.  Next time I’ll use half a ham, either the butt end or the shank end.  Maybe I could smoke both ends as two pieces if we need that much meat.

Brine:  My brine time was 36 hours in giant zip top bags.  It was a struggle working with the bags, so next time I’ll brine in a hotel pan. Some of the recipes called for brining for up to a week.   I might try to push it a little longer to see if there is a difference; maybe 48 or 60 hours.

Timing: Since I had no idea how long this would take, I started Saturday morning.  This lead to an overnight packed into a cooler.   Next time I will plan to finish closer to dinner to keep the surface crusty.  

Meat temperature:  Parts of the ham were a little dry.  Luckily we captured the Au Jus to offset any dryness.  Next time I will pull the ham off the smoker at 150° to see if that helps keep more moisture in the meat.

I definitely enjoyed this grand experiment and look forward to giving it another try.

Special thanks to my editor, Seth Willrich