The Country Ham Booklet

Good country ham is a delicacy that deserves to be in gourmet company. Dry cured with salt and other natural ingredients and aged to a rich intensity, true country ham boasts a flavor and texture that puts the more common wet-cured ham, which is soaked in brine or injected with a salt solution, to shame. This book celebrates country ham's colorful culinary past and its continued close ties with life across the South. Jeanne Voltz and Elaine Harvell discuss the lore and history of country ham; walk the reader through buying, preparing, and serving a country ham; and present some 70 recipes for country ham and its accompaniments. The book also features a glossary and a list of sources for ordering country hams.

Few things are as timeless and southern as a country ham. Gone are the days of considering it a blue-collar staple that is too often overcooked, squashed between biscuit halves or served swimming in red-eye gravy. Today, country ham has found its place among the finest European cured meats and is served at ritzy restaurants as thinly sliced charcuterie or as a garnish on pricey appetizers. The makings of every country ham are the same--hogs, salt and smoke--but these hams undergo an aging process that is no less demanding, varied and fine-tuned than the process for aging the world's finest wines. Get the rub on the history of curing pigs in the Country Ham Belt from food writer Steve Coomes, who consults the best in the ham-making business on everything to do with this salty, southern delicacy.

While the hindquarters of swine have been preserved in salt the world over for thousands of years, there are only a few places on earth where ham is as celebrated or integral to the cuisine as it is in the American South. To begin to understand the place that this iconic food holds in the hearts of southerners, Damon Lee Fowler writes, one has only to step into the historic smokehouse of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and take a deep breath. More than a century after the last hams were hung to smoke in that chamber, the aroma of salt, smoke, and air-dried pork still permeates the rough masonry walls and clay floor, filling the air with its earthy perfume. Even after centuries of culinary transformations throughout the South, that fragrance lingers in kitchens throughout the region. Ham's 55 recipes bring home the love in just about every way—brine- or dry-cured, smoked or not, boiled, baked, glazed, honey-baked and spiral cut, thin-sliced and piled into biscuits and sandwiches, fried up with eggs, with grits, with redeye gravy, added for savor to soups, casseroles, poultry, seafood, and, yes, the vegetable pot. Fowler also includes recipes inspired by Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish dishes, and provides a guide to basic terminology and cooking methods.

This specialty cookbook contains the complete story of ham: the history, the myths, the types, the curing & cooking processes, & over 340 recipes for ham & all the trimmings. 7 x 9

The history of Isle of Wight County and Smithfield are nearly as old as the settlement of the nation itself. In 1608, explorer Capt. John Smith visited the area south of his Jamestown Colony in search of food and trade with the Warascoyak Indians. The region's first inhabitants took root in 1619, and the town of Smithfield was established in 1752. A culinary specialty of the area learned from the Native Americans was introduced to the rest of the world in the late 1700s--a salt-cured cut of pork later known as Smithfield Ham. The popularity of the ham grew, and everyone from royalty (Queen Victoria ordered hams frequently) to presidents have dined on the delicacy, making the quaint village of 6,500 "Ham Town U.S.A." Today, the only place to get a genuine Smithfield ham is from this Virginia town.

A New York Times Bestseller Winner of the James Beard Award for General Cooking and the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award "The one book you must have, no matter what you’re planning to cook or where your skill level falls."—New York Times Book Review Ever wondered how to pan-fry a steak with a charred crust and an interior that's perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge when you cut into it? How to make homemade mac 'n' cheese that is as satisfyingly gooey and velvety-smooth as the blue box stuff, but far tastier? How to roast a succulent, moist turkey (forget about brining!)—and use a foolproof method that works every time? As Serious Eats's culinary nerd-in-residence, J. Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more. In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new—but simple—techniques. In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes with over 1,000 full-color images, you will find out how to make foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, how to make the crispiest, creamiest potato casserole ever conceived, and much more.