Jamón serrano

Today was all about curing one of the hams in salt and air drying it to produce a Spanish serrano style ham that can be enjoyed with a glass of wine. The first stage was to get some untreated wood and build a box to accommodate the the ham. Chris is the expert carpenter and we decided in a box size to fit the shape of the ham so as to no waste large amounts of salt. We measured up the big ham, trotter left on and it was 10.7kg, a whopper...

The lid fits nice and snug, it should be weighted down with twice the weight of the ham...

Lined the bottom with salt...

Rubbing salt into every nook and cranny is very important as the hams weak point is down along the bone so pack the salt in everywhere...

Into the box goes the 10.7kg ham...

Covered in salt...

Nearly 50kg of salt...

Chris testing to see if his lid fits well...

I decided to give it 30kg in weights, this should be ready to take out of the salt in 30 days which is the 13th October. Then it will be washed down and hung up to air dry down in one of the sheds for the winter. It should be ready to start eating in 10-12 months from now...