Italian ham at home

Ham is everyone's favorite meat dish. Ham can be served on a festive table, as well as supplement the family menu with it on weekdays. Despite the fact that ham can be bought in any store, the taste of homemade meat cannot be compared with it. Having cooked ham at home, you can be 100% sure of the quality of meat and spices, because there will be no preservatives and other harmful additives in the composition. Italian ham deserves special attention, it turns out to be especially fragrant and juicy.

1. Prepare the brine. Pour the right amount of water into a saucepan, send it to the fire. When the water boils, pour dried basil and rosemary, half an anise star, black pepper peas. We peel the garlic, cut each clove into several parts, and send it after the spices. Boil the brine for 2-3 minutes, and then cool completely. The cooled brine is filtered through a sieve. Already in the cold brine, we pour sea salt and nitrite salt.

2. Pork is washed under running water, we send it to the refrigerator for a while while the brine cools. After 3-4 hours, the brine should cool completely. Now we stick a clove all over the surface of the meat. We type brine into the cooking syringe and stuff pork with it on both sides. Put the meat in a saucepan, pour the remaining brine.

3. Cover with a plate or lid of a smaller diameter so that the meat is completely immersed in the brine. Leave for 20-24 hours in the refrigerator. During this period of time, we periodically take out the meat and rub it with our hands so that the brine diverges along the fibers as well as possible.

4. Now the meat needs to be thoroughly compressed. To do this, we use a tubular bandage. We put a piece of pork in it, tie the ends on both sides. We hang it in a well-ventilated room. The room temperature should be about 15-17 degrees. If it's summer outside, you can hang it in the basement, for example. We leave it in this position for 8 hours.

5. After the required time, we place the meat in the oven on the grill, under the bottom we install a container for collecting juice. We set the temperature to 50 degrees. Gradually increase the temperature to 80 degrees. The temperature inside the finished ham should not exceed 75 degrees. Therefore, we use a cooking thermometer. Cooking is quite long, the meat spends about 8 hours in the oven, at least. Then let the ham cool down, leave for 8-10 hours in the refrigerator.

Try it! This is something incredible!