" We Cut Open a 2-Year-Old Ham || Old-Fashioned Food Preservation || January 2026"

Hey y'all, it's Megan and Andy. Welcome back to the channel. Glad y'all are here today. It is a windy one outside if you cannot tell by my lovely hairdo. Can't even hold the camera still. Well y'all, we've got a special treat for you today. It's time to slice some of our country hams. Yep, we've got one hanging and not only is it going to be a special treat for y'all, it's going to be a special treat for us too. We've got one that's been hanging for two years. That don't always happen. Lots of times they get sliced, you know, the following summer after they were cured, but just so happened we have one that's hung for two years. We're going to slice it today. Fingers crossed it's good. One more quick thing, look at this. Be more to come on that later. It looks so good. But the guys did get it finished. It was actually like right before Christmas. They got everything wrapped up and done with it, but now the rest of the work's on me. Let's go. We're going to see today how good that roof's on. Yeah, tell me about it. We'll find out if it's screwed down good or not. So we keep the hams up at my grandma's. They're hanging in at the biker barn right now. So we're going to go up there and get them down, bring them back to daddy's shop, and we'll start opening it up and see what it looks like. Boy, that wind's cutting the shine, ain't it? Yeah, it is. It's cold. Well, I believe it's that one right there. It looks like it. I hope it's all right. If not, we got this one left that we can cut. How are we going to reach it, honey? You better grow taller. I know, I need something to stand on. I definitely can't reach it. You better be careful. And I ain't looking, too. There we go. Come on, huh? How long have you been doing this? Three years is the longest I ever may have been late. Yeah, but it had dried up a whole lot. I don't know. I hope this one's right in the perfect spot. All right. Be careful. There it is. Looks kind of nasty, don't it? Look at all that mold on the back side. Well, this side ain't quite like that. Part of it. I mean, it hung through two summers, so... It don't smell like anything. Well, good. So, that's good. That's all right. Well, better ride there till we get to the house. I tell you what, just in case somebody's new and they haven't seen our hams and stuff, we'll pull up here to the packhouse and show the ones that we cured this year, but they haven't been hung up yet. So, this is where they get salted down at. This is an old tobacco packhouse, and these hams are the ones we salted just this season. Here in springtime, they'll be hung up, and at that point, they're pretty much preserved until... Yeah, they're hung. We need them. They're hung in those pillowcases like the ham we just took down. When March comes around and they get hung up like that, then they're there till you're ready to cut them. Right. And people ask us all the time, how many hams do we typically put up? And typically, I shoot for two. I try to do two hams because it takes us one ham to get through a year. A ham will last us a year. Sometimes. Most of the time. Now, the kids are really starting to pick up on eating it, so that's probably going to change. But the reason I do two is because there's always chance of one going bad. And so, if you put up two, well, you know, you just doubled your chances of having a good ham. And you'll see all these hams back here in the background. They're not all ours. They're all part ours, part Andy's family. So, I mean, all these you see here are not just for us. And the wetness that's on the hams, that's very, very normal. That's what you want them to do, actually. Yeah, that's the moisture draining out of them. And that's how they cure, is getting that moisture out. Yep. All right, let's go slice into one. All right. Up there, it ain't nothing between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the fence post, but it's blowed down. All right, let's see what it looks like. So, if anybody's interested in seeing the whole process of how we cure ham from start to finish, we have a video, a full-length video of the ham getting salted down all the way to the point of it getting sliced. Right. If you'd like to see something like that. And now, I will add, we usually get a lot of questions, you know, a long time ago before people had meat thaws, like we do now, how would they do this? Because we actually slice it and vacuum seal the slices. So, back in the day, they would trim it up and they would cut off what they needed. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I feel like we forget to mention that every single video. Because if we left out the slices, once you see us slice this, if we left those out, they would dry up to nothing. Yeah. Just because of the way the salt content that's in it, the slices would just dry up and they wouldn't keep. And after you slice into that, you also somewhat like break that seal you have around the ham right now. But if they, but I know, but they used to slice it and it'll just make a crust back over it. Yeah, so that's what I was gonna say. What grandpa used to do. This is what daddy has told me that grandpa used to do. Of course, now you got to keep in mind that they didn't just eat country ham on occasion. They ate it every day. Right. Daddy said his grandpa, I mean his daddy ate, which would have been my grandpa, ate country ham every single morning for breakfast. Every morning. That's what he ate. And he would cut one in half. You can cut it in half with a hacksaw and keep one half down in the basement hanging to keep it cool. And then the other half would be upstairs and they would. On the counter, right? Yeah, on the counter. I think that's what he said. And they would just slice a little bit off every time. And so when you take just one slice off of ham, like Megan said, it sort of scabs over. I mean, it don't technically, but you understand what I'm saying. And at that point you're still leaving all of this protective layer on it. But when we slice it and slice it all at one time, at that point we've exposed all of it. And so it can potentially go bad at that point if you don't vacuum seal it and freeze it. But that's how they kept them back then. All right. So I need, Jacob, we need that sawzall right there too. And I'm going to need one of them stainless steel blades. There should be one over there on the, behind the spigot on the sink. And so what you see here, if you watch our curing videos, that brown paper, we do leave that on there once we put them in the sack. So all that's got to come off. Yeah, that's one of them, I think. So we're not still not looking at the ham just yet? No, that's not the ham. That's the paper. Yeah. Yeah, that'll work. Just lay it down there for right now. We don't need it yet. What are we going to work on? We're going to get all these strings off. It's wrapped in string. And the string's what's holding the brown paper on. Now, when, when curing, I mean, when, when hanging a ham, there are so many different ways that you can do it. I know people who pull this paper off before they hang them. They'll wash it down. They'll wash all the soft off before they hang them. And I mean, you know, it's just all in the ways you do it. There's so many ways to cure a country ham. The process we show you is just how we've always done it. And now this ham is not smoked or anything. It's not smoked. All of our ancestors here where we live, that was not any, that was not part of the process. Just in our neck of the woods here. Not to say it can't be done. And I'm sure it's really good if one is smoked. It's just ours are not smoked. Yeah, it does. It don't look bad. I'm going to go ahead and flip it over and get off the back. The bad thing about it is when a ham has went this long and you leave the paper on it, I feel like you got a more of a mess to clean up. Well, we got to trim it anyway. But yeah, all of this will get scraped off with a knife. Every bit of it. And the mold is actually a good thing. That's part of the, part of that process. I hope it's good. You just always, you know, and not, not saying because it's two years old, that's not why I hope it's good. I mean, anytime you cure a ham, it's just a risk of losing one. Always. And you never know. Honestly, you don't know until you cut into it. All it takes is a blood spot in the middle that you didn't know was there and it can make it have a bad spot. Yeah, you'll have some rank meat. Yeah, we'll just put all that in that bucket. Yeah, it don't smell. It don't really have a, believe it or not, it don't have a smell and that's a good thing. It has no smell. A lot of times if you have one that went rank, you can get a, yeah, you get a hint of something, but you can't, like I said, you can't really tell until you cut into it. How about a, hold that thing for me, Jacob. Hold it by the hop. It's all part of the paper. That paper where it's stuck down to the meat like it did. And it's the layer of salt. So you can tell, you hear that? You can tell that's where your skin's at because it changes, changes tone. Because we're on the skin side right now. It wouldn't be even if you did it that way. All right, I'm gonna wipe all this off and we'll flip it over to the other side. You know what it reminds me of, Daddy? The hams on the cartoons when they just eat the entire ham. And so far from what I can tell, I believe it's just fine. Is that the bone? Yeah, that's the bone. That's how much it drawed up because you remember that bone was out here flush with the meat when we saw from down. And to some people that probably looks just plum awful, but to the trained eye, it's beautiful. That's right. So I think I've shared this story before, but I don't know where he got them from, but my uncle used to own a construction business and he bought all his employees country hams for Christmas one year. Well, more than half of them didn't realize that this is what a country ham looks like when it's being cured because he'd give them to him in the sack. They didn't realize that this is what a ham looks like after it's been cured. And when they opened up that sack, they thought they had all went bad and over half of them didn't realize that, you know, country ham is supposed to look like this. And you'll see the goods. We're getting closer. You'll see just how pretty the meat is underneath all of that. Yeah, this is the time consuming process here. So you're trimming the outside layer off now? Yep. Yep. We're getting to the good stuff. It smells good. Smells like ham. It smells really good. I was a little bit worried because that fat had that little bit of a yellow tint to it, but I don't smell nothing. I think everything's good. I got the hound dog nose. And now this layer, the crust as I call it, is very tough. A good sharp knife is what you need if you're doing this right here. And a stiff bladed knife. You don't want one of these flimsy bladed knives either. I'd like to know how much that one weighed when we put it up. Well, so we tried keeping up with all that. I'm just saying to know how much it weighs now. Yeah. We tried keeping up with all of it and we would write it on the paper. That did you a lot of good. Yeah, later on it just didn't work because you couldn't see it. Very good at record, I mean not very good at record keeping. That looks mighty fine. It's just an amazing process. That's hard right there. That's always the hardest part to clean off. Right there against that bone. Don't let that thing slip. Cut my arm off. You'll find out what your knife's made of because I can feel the handle on this one giving. Golly, that smells good. So here's an up close of underneath the crust and what that looks like. Does it smell fabulous? Next, I'm going to take the sawzall and cut out this bone and this bone. And something, I'm going to give a little quick tip here. Something that we found this year that we've never known about before was food grade blades that go in these sawzalls. So they're stainless steel. Their teeth spacing is wide apart and they work amazing on bones. So with that being said, if you didn't have a meat saw and you wanted to slice your own ham, you could take a knife. I actually remember daddy doing something like this. He would take a knife and slice the meat part and then take a hacksaw and cut the bone. But this would be another option. And actually my good friend, she cut her pork chops. She cut her pork chops with one of these. Yep. But anyways, the only reason I'm slicing these off is because it just makes it easier over there. This ain't a step that's necessary. Boy, that thing does cut it. Yeah, it does. Compared to... Compared to... Yeah. Yeah. Got it? I think so. Yeah, it just makes it a little easier over here on the meat for those big old bones to be gone. Flip it up and get the sawdust off. I think we're about ready to slice it. That's a good look right there at what it looks like once it's cleaned up. You got all that pretty meat. Look right there. I mean, that's... Yeah, that's prime. You gonna let me try a bite of it? Smells like it's supposed to smell. So here's another up close and personal view of it all the way around here. You can see it's not rotten. It doesn't look rotten. There's no smell. So the very outside layer, like these really dark spots are kind of like a jerky. And Megan and Jacob both like to eat those straight off the ham without frying them up in a frying pan. There you go. It smells good. I'll show you up close of that. So you can see it's really dark, kind of leathery looking. So it puts me in the mind of beef jerky or prosciutto. Well, that's probably what it's close to is prosciutto. That right there is better than the ham itself. I just don't see that. It is so good. Once you get down into the ham though, the meat's not like that. No, it's just this outer layer here. You gotta fix me one more too. That's only a luxury I get to eat once a year. You want it off of this side? This would be a good one. You want to try it? Got a little pepper on it. I mean, that is like a delicacy. But once again, I don't recommend doing that on the inside. No, it's just this really tough... Just that outside layer gets really, really... Well, like I said, the best way to describe it is it's almost like jerky. Yeah, it's like a pork jerky. Oh, it's so good though. I mean, it is like... I mean, I don't know. I think the ham's better than that. I think it's like velvety and... You ready to slice it? I reckon. Let me go ahead and get my boxes. What we'll do first is just cut this end piece off right here. That can be cut up and used for stuff to season beans and all that with. And then we'll get into the actual slices. So yeah, Maggie, flip it on. I'm going to go one more and get into a little bit more meat. All right. May not be much meat. Boy, that new blade cuts great. All right, cut it off for a minute. I don't want it too thick. I don't want it too thick. All right. Nah, it's still too thick. Go on in a little bit. Yep. All right. Ready? Yeah. Anything about that? Does that look good to you? Yeah, I think that's perfect. I'm telling you what, that blade is amazing. We put a new blade on it last night. Me and daddy did. Golly, that thing cuts good. I'm gonna have a lot of fat to cut off of this one. I guess the meat's rolled up. It looks good though. It smells good. I can smell it now. We're getting into some more meat there. Cut that thing off for a minute. Just look at that y'all. Oh my goodness. It's beautiful. Look at that. Golly, that smells so good. But I'm gonna tell you so far between slicing a ham that's one year old versus this two-year-old one, I'm not seeing a ton of difference. The only difference I see is I think the red meat is lesser. I think so. That fat layer's a little, or either it was a really fat hog. It was probably just a really fat hog. I don't think, I mean, I do feel like it's probably drawed up more than a year old ham, but it's not nothing like, I mean, I remember one time we cut one that was three years old, I think, and it was like shrunk up to nothing. You know what I mean? Dust. Well, it wasn't dust. The center of it was still some really good meat, but the outside of it had dried up to the point that it was not what you would call ideal. Still very edible. I'm just saying I expected a little bit more of this and this is beautiful. I mean, I don't think it looks as raw. It looks a little more cured, I guess you could say. Colored a little bit. Yeah, you're talking about what the older generation's done. I know around here, anyway, like this was a service that was offered by your local country store was to slice the ham. They'd have a meat saw and they'd slice your ham for you. You know, that was up to the 50s, 60s. Sure is pretty though. Yeah, it is. I bet you it's going to have some good flavor when we cook it. It's definitely different because there's usually meat around both of these bones. Yeah, now that stuff's drawed up. Yeah. That's gone. Yeah. I was trying to figure out why the bone looked different in this one than the last one we did. That's what it is. I feel like it's gotten thick, ain't it? Yeah, what happened? Look at that. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we're starting to get into the prime cuts. Yeah, that's my favorite pieces there. Look at that. You're like about to just like... That looks good, y'all. Yeah, that's what I call the prime cuts right there. That's when you're a prime piece. Beautiful. And so we'll trim that fat layer off, throw it in the frying pan. Yep. That fat layer makes good, uh, throw in the beans. Yeah, it moves. It totally blows right up. That better? Yeah. Boy, now that, I can see it. Huh? It's so pretty. Look. Oh, that's beautiful. Something you really notice there is how this has got a different color than store-bought country ham. This is a lot darker, a darker meat. It's a lot longer cure. It's a lot longer cure. It's not injected with all types of things like store-bought ones are, so it doesn't have the pink color that the store-bought country ham has. And in turn, believe it or not, this ham is not near as salty as store-bought country ham. I personally can't eat store-bought country ham because it is just way too salty. This ham here ain't like that. Now, these end pieces down here close to the heart are some of the most flavorful pieces there is because they soak up most of the cure, the salt, the sugar, and all down here close to the heart. This is some of daddy's favorite, isn't it? Them are good pieces. We'll trim the rest of that up for bean meat. Yep, that'll be good in some beans. There it is, y'all. The meat that kept communities fed back in the days and still keeps us fed. Kept them fed through the wintertime. But it looks good. The only thing left to do now is try it. Let's try it. So I guess we'll pack it up and try a little bit tonight. Yeah. You ready to try us a couple pieces? What do you think? Of course. That's right. Well, I'll show you the way that I fix it to get ready for frying, and you can also fix it this way to get it ready for vacuum sealing. I usually don't. I usually leave all this intact, and then I save it for a pot of beans or something. But I trim all that fat off right there. I trim all that off. Now, do you wash it before you cook it? No. Because I've heard some people washing it if they don't want it salted. You know, one year we did a plain old salt cured ham. I washed it. So then you can put this big old piece in the frying pan if you want, just like that. I don't like to. I'm gonna cut that in half. Let me get this off. So I'm just gonna cut that in half. We'll have one piece with the bone and one piece not. So you can see there, that's a fine piece of grade A Lawson ham. Lawson ham. And I'll do this piece right here the same way. I'll just take my little knife, go around it like that right there. So you're using your new knife. Yes, I am. Got me some case knife, thanks to my dear husband. The whole kitchen set. The whole kitchen set. So these pieces right here, I like to save them, and I'll cut them up in smaller pieces. And they do good seasoning beans. They do really good. That saltiness and everything, that flavor is in that fat. Now if I, on the contrary, if I am making red-eye gravy, then I will leave more fat on there because I want that extra grease. The texture of this is definitely, I can tell it's been salted longer though, by the cut that's cut. Looks a little different. It's a little darker. Well you can look over here in the frying pan. Look at the color of that. Mighty fine, mighty fine. Speaking of red-eye gravy, we had red-eye gravy, scrambled eggs, fried apples, homemade biscuits, molasses, and uh, was that it? The other night? I think so. You talk about good. I had one pack of last year's ham left, and so I got it out of the way. Golly it was good. I like to take that, take and molasses out, which it was, or sorghum syrup, whatever you want to call it. We call it molasses. But I like to pour that out, and then put my red-eye gravy over top of it, and then dip a biscuit in it. Oh my gosh. It was like eating candy. Yeah, it was good. I had a lot of people ask, like how do you fix the country ham? That right there, I just fry it up a little bit until it's a, it'll get a little brown on each side. It'll change color a little bit, and that's, I mean, that's really all I do to it. You're almost just eating it. Pretty much, yeah. The longer you cook it, the more chewy I think it is. I'd rather have it not cook near as long as what some people like. Yeah, but see there, I mean, that's about done. See how it's curling up and stuff on itself? That little bit of fat that was in between there is kind of rendering out a little bit. So, that's gonna be good. If you ever get a chance in life to try home-cured country ham, I suggest you do it. I know a lot of people are gonna say it's too salty, but like Andy said earlier, the salt in this ain't nothing compared to the salt of the store-bought country ham. The store-bought country ham is very brine compared to this, but I don't know. It's one of our favorite things. Now, if store-bought country ham was all I could get my hands on, well, then that's better than no country ham, but still, this is night and day difference compared to that from the store. Yes. And around here, I know maybe not everywhere is like this, but around here, you walk in the local country store and you got country ham laying right there on the counter at the front desk. There's a lot of ham cured in boon, I think, right? I think they're somewhere up in the mountains. Yeah, I think it's boon. That does exist, and that's where most of these stores around here get them from. Yeah. But they, I mean, they're just cured in a different process, and it's just a totally different taste, totally different texture, totally different, honestly, it's a totally different piece of meat. And we don't, we don't sell any. I know every time we make a country ham video, people want to know if we're willing to sell any, and we don't, you know, we don't do this to sell, this is just for our family. So, that's why we want to teach you or teach somebody that's wanting to learn to try to do it yourself. That's right. So, all right. So, just like that, I mean, quick as that, it don't take no time to warm it up, get a little bit, a little color to it, and it is ready to eat. We'll let it cool down and we'll try it. See if it's edible? Yeah. Oh, I'm excited. I think it's going to be fantastic. I do it in my number 10 pan here. I've got a good layer of ham grease right there. I take about a cup of black coffee and pour in that and kind of deglaze my pan, add a little salt and pepper, let it simmer about three or four minutes, and red-eye gravy you got. All right, let me get my cornbread out, and we'll try to give it a little shake, you know, if it's stuck or not. Look at that. Ain't that pretty? Of course. Well, how's the ham taste? That's good. Is it? Yeah. Like really good? Mm-hmm. Ain't that good? Golly, I wish I could send you a piece through the camera. Very good ham. Yeah, when you eat it. I wonder if I've got something to do with where it's set for two years. That's what I'm wondering, like salt buildup or something. I'm gonna tell you what, like flavor-wise, texture-wise and everything, you don't get much better than that. The texture of that is like on point. Because y'all, I'm telling you, like I know it makes you nervous, but when it's bad, I promise you, you'll know it. And if you have any question whether it smells funny or not, throw a piece in the frying pan, and when you start cooking it, that smell just gets worse. You'll know it's no good. There's no question whether you'll recognize that smell. And it don't smell like rotten meat. Well, somewhat sometimes it does, but it just smells weird. Kind of smells rank. Yeah, yeah, that's a better explanation. But there it is. You did good, dear. Ain't too bad to be two years old, is it? Crazy that's a two-year-old piece of meat, ain't it? Yep. But anyways, I guess that's gonna about wrap up today's video. Hope y'all enjoyed the video, and we do hope this encouraged you, and hope you might have learned something from the video. It's just something we take a lot of pride in, this old ways of curing meat. And we want to share that with y'all, because it's one of those things that if it keeps on, that it's going to be gone. And that's one thing here that we try to do is try to keep these things alive, bring back the memories, you know, and we hope you enjoy it. In our area, there's still quite a few families that raise hogs and all, but there's only two families that I know of, and us is one of them, that still salt down hams. And I think, which I mean not rightfully so, but I think people are these days are just scared they're going to lose them, because the weather is different now. And so it is kind of a greater chance that you're going to lose a ham now, versus 50 years ago. But, the weather's been good on us the last two years. Last couple of years the weather's been perfect, and you know, I plan on continuing doing it until something catastrophic happens. Yep, yep. Anyways guys, we appreciate y'all watching, until we see y'all on the next one. Y'all have a good one. Have a good one. Texture is great. Well it must not be too salty, because I sit here and eat all this, and they had the first thing to drink. Just give it a few minutes. That is good. The texture is a big thing, I noticed. Yeah. It has a very good texture. That's really good. Yep. That right there, look how tender that is. Yep.