Thank You Food Network

Thank you Food Network for showing me how to be a better cook. From this I get enjoyment in cooking and seeing smiling faces enjoying my food I prepared.

I don’t do much baking except that I bake my own bread every weekend for the coming week. I do not own a mixer or a bread machine as I use a wooden spoon and a big bowl.

I have a Brinkmann Smoker that I have used for over 10 years. I love this thing. One of the things I like to smoke is ham. I get a whole smoked ham that is heat to eat. I get the fire in the smoker to 250 with a steam pan in the bottom of the smoker with an inch and a half of water in it.

I start the fire with charcoal in a chimney using scrap printer paper as the starter. I try to use chunk or natural charcoal as the kind that was developed by Henry Ford has wax in it. When the fire is lit I soak hickory hunks in some water so they will smoke longer when applied.

My Ham Slicing Tool

After washing up from lighting a fire and handling the charcoal, I don vinyl gloves and unwrap the packaging from the ham (Stater Bros is where I usually can find hole, not half, hams). I then take my patented ham slicing tool set to # 2 and make a diamond pattern of cuts over the entire ham. By this time the charcoal should be ready to be dumped out of the chimney and more added so the smoker can get to temp of 300.

Once the temp is right, I put the ham in, hock end pointing to the firebox in the middle of the smoker. I then take 4-5 hickory hunks and put them on top of the fire. I wait around and wait until the temperature recovers and stabilizes and then I set the temp to 250 +- .

After 30 minutes smoking, the cuts I made are starting to open up and then I don another pair of gloves and grab my light brown sugar and honey. I then show love and affection to the ham by giving it a massage of brown sugar and honey. I also rotate the ham so the hock is away from the firebox.

I do a fuel check at this time and if necessary add some depending how the fire looks. I only add hunks for the first hour and a half then charcoal after that to hold the heat. I repeat the rub down after 1 hour, checking the temp after 30 min.

After 3 hours of smoking all that is left to do is put it in another steam pan and cover it with foil. Let it rest and then enjoy.

I do save the ham bone for beans and the sides will be either potato salad or scalloped potatoes. Maybe some baked beans.