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Country ham is a variety of heavily salted ham preserved by curing and
smoking Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the resulting smoke is typically breathed in to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have b ...
, associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States.


Production

Country hams are salt-cured (with or without nitrites) for one to three months. They are usually
hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...
smoked (usually
hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mex ...
and red oak), but some types of country ham, such as the "salt-and-pepper ham" of
North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...
, are not smoked. Missouri country hams traditionally incorporate brown sugar in their cure mix and are known to be milder and less salty than hams produced in more eastern states such as Kentucky and Virginia. They are then aged for several months to 3 years, depending on the fat content of the meat.Kaminsky, Peter. (2005). ''Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them''. Hyperion. 304 p.


See also

* List of dried foods * List of hams *
List of smoked foods This is a list of smoked foods. Smoking is the process of flavoring, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. Foods have been smoked by humans throughout history. Meats and f ...
* Smithfield ham, a type of country ham.


References


Further reading

* Megan E. Edwards. "Virginia Ham: The Local and Global of Colonial Foodways". ''Food and Foodways'' 19 (Jan. 2011). pp. 56–73. {{DEFAULTSORT:Country Ham Ham Dried meat Cuisine of the Southern United States Smoked meat