This Salt Needs to Lose Some of its Saltness

The country ham search continues.

I tried to get some ham from Benton’s in Tennessee, but I made a mistake and ordered the wrong thing. The photo on the site was more than a bit misleading, and somehow I either failed to read all of the copy or I read copy from another product. Anyway, I thought I was getting half a pound of ham slices, but I ended up with paper-thin slices of very old ham intended to compete with prosciutto.

It tastes fine, but I’m not a prosciutto or charcuterie person. My feeling is that if you can afford a fancy board, you can afford bread so you can make a proper sandwich.

Charcuterie is boring. It’s a fraction of a real dish. When you eat charcuterie, you’re eating ingredients.

I think peer pressure convinces people they like charcuterie even though they don’t. It’s not a legitimate course. It’s just scraps of meat on a board.

I contacted Benton’s because I thought they had made a mistake, and they are graciously sending me what I actually wanted. I just have to pay for shipping.

Meanwhile, my second package of Broadbent’s ham has arrived. The first samples I bought were very dry, unbelievably salty, and somewhat leathery in consistency. Also, I couldn’t taste much flavor. I ended up throwing some of the ham out.

Country ham is supposed to be salty, but the slices I received were not normal. It’s supposed to be a little tough, but it should fall apart when you chew it. You shouldn’t feel like a shipwreck victim trying to eat a shoe.

I tried the new package today, and it was better.

The ham is still very salty, but I don’t think it’s quite as extreme as the first package.

The texture is still tough, but it’s not like a hard piece of leather.

I was able to taste the country ham flavor. It was not the near-perfect flavor of Newsom’s, or the unique-but-still-classic flavor of Meacham, but it was good. A little better than the ham slices at Cracker Barrel, I suppose.

The slices were still too thin for me. The perfect thickness for fried country ham is 3/8″, and these looked like half of that. It’s meat. It’s not copying paper. Give the customer something to eat.

If I had to buy a Broadbent’s ham, I would slice it thicker, soak the slices in water for three days, and then store it in vacuum bags. The water would tame the salt and fix the dryness.

This would probably work, but I won’t be buying any more Broadbent’s ham, so I will never find out. Meacham is as good, or nearly as good, as Newsom’s, and it’s much less expensive than Broadbent’s, so I don’t have any reason to buy Broadbent’s.

I don’t know why Broadbent’s hams are so salty and tough. All hams are cured pretty much the same way. They are covered with salt. You would think they would all be equally salty.

Maybe Broadbent’s is using hams that are dryer and less fatty to begin with, or maybe they keep them at lower humidity.

I’m not complaining about the salt because I’m an ignorant person who thinks all country ham is too salty. I know what a ham is supposed to taste like.

The two last contenders are Benton’s and Penn. Both should arrive this coming week. In the end, I will have tried 5 brands of ham, and that will have to be enough.