Deli Ham... From the Comfort of Your Home!

With the rise in prices, who wouldn't want to take control and make their own deli style ham for a fraction of the cost? Good news, you can!!

To make deli ham (also known as restructured meat) you need a few bits of equipment, and the star of this show is a Stainless Steel Meat Press. When shopping online for your own, ensure that it's stainless steel, has a thermometer (or at least hole for you to insert your own), and a spring to create the press.

Other equipment:

• Kitchen Scale with increased gram accuracy
• Blender or Food Processor
• Stand Mixer
• Pot to boil water with press or sous-vide setup

Ingredients:

• Pork Loin or Butt or Shoulder
• Pork Tenderloin
• Cure #1 (aka pink salt)
• Kosher Salt
• Morton Lite Salt
• Dry Milk Powder
• Sugar
• Gelatin
• Liquid Smoke
• Ice Water

To get started:

• Pork Loin / Boston Butt / Shoulder - 1,100 g (2 lbs 6.7 oz)
• Pork Tenderloin (or any lean cut) - 550 g (1 lbs 3.4 oz)

If we pureed all the pork in a blender, the resulting product would be closer to SPAM than a Deli Ham, so to give it that look, we're going to mix both chunks and pureed pork. Cut out any sinew if you find it and discard. Cut up your meat dividing into 2 piles, a smaller pile of the leaner cuts of your pork and the rest in another pile, about a 1/3 to 2/3 ratio, and put aside the small pile.

With the large pile, in small batches, pulse in a food processor until it's a paste and return it to to the chunks, repeating until all the large pile is done. You may be tempted to put it all in the blender or food processor, but it's super hard on your equipment, and we want to keep all the meat out of the danger zone (below 40 f (4 c) or above 140 f (60 c)), so by processing in small batches it keeps the amount of time needed down, and heats the meat less.

Once all blended and mixed, put in a non reactive bowl, mix the chunks and the pureed meat. Put into the fridge for 20 - 30 minutes to cool down while you're prepping your spices.

While all the spices / ingredients may look to have odd weights, it's because they're derived from percentages, which I encourage you to also use, so I've given you a shot of the percentages used in this recipe, so you can scale up or down as you feel fit to.

• Cure #1 - 4.1 g
• Kosher Salt - 24.8 g
• Morton Lite Salt - 9.9 g

Some notes on salts and cure. Since this is essentially an emulsified sausage, we need to have a certain level of salt to appropriately bind the meat together. Our threshold generally is 1.5% - 2.5% and I've chosen to be right between that. If you choose to doctor this, my advice is to reduce the kosher salt. For the cure, if you chose to omit this, your deli ham will not have the traditionally vibrant pink, nor will it technically be a preserved meat. You could replace with celery juice powder or a combination of celery juice powder and beet powder, but I am not certain on dosing, and be sure to work the salt back in to get to that 1.5% - 2.5%. Lastly on the Lite Salt, we're including this to provide potassium into the mix, to further enhance the bind. I use Morton's only because they have a known mix of 50% salt and 50% potassium. If you choose to replace this, only replace 1/2 the Morton's Lite weight into salt.

• Dry Milk Powder - 3.8 g
• Sugar - 24.8 g
• Gelatin - 7.4 g

Mix the dry ingredients up, and in a separate container mix up your wet ingredients

• Liquid Smoke - 13.4 ml
• Ice Water - 86.6 ml

Put your cooled meat into a stand mixer (or mix by hand) and keeping it on a lower speed (I do the second slowest speed), work in your dry ingredients, and once mixed, your wet. Continue mixing for 3 - 5 minutes. We're looking for it to become sticky or tacky such that you can pull some out, invert it, and it stays stuck, defying gravity, even if you move it around.

Put this mix into your meat press, avoiding air pockets as much as you can. Seal up the press with the plate and spring, put in the fridge for 2 - 5 days. Any additional can be put into airtight or vacuum sealed bag.

It's time for the main event! After 2 - 5 days to let your cure penetrate evenly, it's time to get cooking! Get a pot of water and put your press in. You'll want to ensure that the line of the water meets the top of your meat (hint take your press out of the fridge for 5 - 10 minutes and it's start sweating and stop where the meat stops). While pork only needs to get to 145 f (62.8 c), it is generally recommended to go to 158 f (70 c) for ground meat, so get your ham up to temperature. In the sous-vide, I programmed 158 f for 1 hour, and measured then.

Once at temp, allow your meat press to cool slightly, then put back into the fridge until cold, 3 - 4 hours or overnight.

Almost there!

After your meat has cooled, take your press out of the fridge and disassemble. The plate pressing against the meat will be a little stubborn, but wiggling the spring to create pressure will eventually be successful. Invert the press, and start shaking it to loosen the meat. It too will be stubborn, but what you can do is run the base and sides of the press against some hot water. That will liquefy the gelatin a bit enough to allow it to come free.

Now, time to slice and eat! If you happen to have a deli slicer, it looks that much more like what you normally purchase from the store! Congratulations!

This makes a very stereotypical ham, but now you have the basics, and can riff from there! Want to add honey? Garlic? Jalapeno?

You've saved some money, and hopefully have enjoyed learning a new tasty skill. The future is your ham, enjoy! (And please share if you make something delicious!!)

Thanks for reading through!

Further reading:

Nitrite Free

Nitrite (and alternatives) Experiment

Food Safety Temperatures