Preparation

Butcher Tips: 

Lamb ham can be made from a traditional bone in, semi boneless easy carve or boned & rolled lamb legs. 

Truss easy carve or boneless lamb legs tight then vac down for a day or two to remove air pockets inside the leg. 

Method - 

• Place your lamb leg in a non-porous container that you will be brining in and pour over water to see how much you will need to completely cover.
• Measure out the water into a pot and add the appropriate 5.5% of salt, sugar and the calculated sodium nitrite.
• Bring up to a simmer to dissolve salts and sugar.

Now you are going to add your all the other flavourings – essentially you are making a flavourful tea that the salt is going to soak into the ham.

• Once all of the ingredients are added to the brine let them steep in the hot liquid to infuse all those flavours.
• Once it has infused let it cool completely and pour over the leg. If you want to use a brining needle to speed it up, you can at this point, firstly strain the mixture to remove seeds etc before injecting the leg all over.
• Let the leg brine in the cure for one week (in the fridge). (3 days if injected)
• Take the leg out of the brine and give a rinse off under running water and place inside tube netting or truss the leg into an even shape.
• Let it hang in your fridge over night to dry out slightly and develop a tacky surface this is called a 'pellicle' and will help the smoke adhere to it a lot better than if it was wet.
• Place the leg in a preheated smoker at 80c and smoke until the internal temperature is 70c
• Shock the leg in ice water to reduce the temperature as quickly as possible.
• Enjoy!