Tennessee Country Ham
A pork leg dry-salted, dried, and smoked for months, until dense, deeply salty, and almost sweet from aging. It is sliced very thin. This is preservation raised to art, the treasure of the Southern smokehouse.
A pork leg dry-salted, dried, and smoked for months, until dense, deeply salty, and almost sweet from aging. It is sliced very thin. This is preservation raised to art, the treasure of the Southern smokehouse.
A prudent man wastes nothing of the pig, least of all its leg. You rub it with salt until it can take no more, you hang it in the smokehouse, and you wait — through winter, spring, summer, which salts it further. When at last you slice it, thin as a leaf, you taste an entire year of patience. That is the true wealth of a plantation: not gold, but a larder that never empties.
- •Whole pork leg — one (piece to salt)
- •Salt — in abundance (curing)
- •Brown sugar or molasses — a little (sweetener)
- •Hickory smoke — weeks (smoking)
Tennessee Country Ham
A pork leg dry-salted, dried, and smoked for months, until dense, deeply salty, and almost sweet from aging. It is sliced very thin. This is preservation raised to art, the treasure of the Southern smokehouse.
Why this dish? Jackson's "plantation account book" kept records of livestock and salted meats: at The Hermitage, hams were salted and smoked to last the year. Country ham was the planter's edible wealth, hanging in the smokehouse.
A prudent man wastes nothing of the pig, least of all its leg. You rub it with salt until it can take no more, you hang it in the smokehouse, and you wait — through winter, spring, summer, which salts it further. When at last you slice it, thin as a leaf, you taste an entire year of patience. That is the true wealth of a plantation: not gold, but a larder that never empties.
Ingredients (period version)
- Whole pork leg — one (piece to salt)
- Salt — in abundance (curing)
- Brown sugar or molasses — a little (sweetener)
- Hickory smoke — weeks (smoking)
Ingredients
- Already aged country ham — 200 g (to serve)
- Butter — 1 knob (quick cooking)
- Hoecakes or cornbread — for serving (accompaniment)
- Black coffee (for red-eye gravy) — a splash (optional sauce)
Method
- Aging takes months: at home, enjoy a country ham bought already cured.
- Slice the ham very thinly.
- Quickly sear the slices in a hot skillet with a knob of butter, 1 min per side.
- Optional: deglaze the pan with a splash of black coffee to make the famous "red-eye gravy."
- Serve on a warm hoecake, drizzled with the pan juices.
- Note: country ham is very salty — a thin slice is enough.
How it was made : Country ham is prepared by dry-curing: the leg is buried in salt (sometimes with added sugar or molasses), then dried and smoked over hickory wood for months, even a year. This method, inherited from Europe and perfected in the South, preserved meat without refrigeration. Coffee-based red-eye gravy is a creation of plantation kitchens and Southern roadhouses.
The contemporary twist : Serve a translucent slice of country ham like a Southern jamón ibérico, laid on a warm hoecake with a drizzle of molasses — a crossover between Spain and Tennessee.
Andrew Jackson · Charactorium