Sunday, June 21, 2009


Making Tasso

My first solo attempt at curing meat!

I chose Tasso Ham as it is a quick cure with no special equipment needed. There are many, many recipes for this and I decided the following:
Started with a 4 lb butt and removed the small section of bone. I sliced it into four ~1 inch steaks. I completely coated them in a cure:
1 cup salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 Tbls black pepper
1 Tbls paprika
1 tsp pink salt

I let the steaks cure in the fridge for three hours. After three hours they had given off a LOT of liquid. I rinsed off the cure and patted dry then placed them on a rack in the fridge to dry/cure for three days. After three days they had firmed up quite a bit but were not hard.

I then rubbed them with the following:
2 Tbls Cayenne
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp allspice

The steaks were smoked at ~225 F for ~2.5 hrs with hickory. I pulled when they temped at 170 and let rest.End result...VERY pink, quite hammy and HOOTTTTT. Incredibly juicy.

They were vaccuum sealed and thrown in the freezer. Will use this to repace ham hocks in my beans as well as add to jambalaya. A great seasoning meat, definetly not a main course.

John Folse Recipe: http://www.jfolse.com/recipes/meats/pork31.htm
http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Tasso.pdf
Len Poli Recipe:
Randy Q's recipe: http://www.randyq.addr.com/tasso/tasso_prep.htm
Pork and Whiskey: http://porkandwhiskey.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/tasso-ham/
DJFoodie recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Tasso-Ham/Detail.aspx
Ruhlman also has a recipe....buy the book.

5 comments:

  1. That looks SWEET! I'll have to try that with a ham under the guise that I call it "speck."

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  2. DMS, that looks mighty tasty indeed!

    I feel like licking the screen (but I won't, I promise, cuz that'd be weird)

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Excellent result! I did add garlic, Indonesian coarse white pepper and onion powder to the dry cure, mixed 1/2 half-sharp Hungarian paprika to 1/2 sweet Hungarian paprika and increased the dry cure time to 5 days. Again, excellent! Make sure to use Prague Powder (pink salt as directed).

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