Cooked ham

[Ron Avery]

In most Autoroute restuarants at lunchtime you can have a nice hot meal with sliced gammon, but despite looking all over in all the supermarkets I cannot find one to buy to cook myself.  So where do the French get it and what should I be asking for? 

I bought a "jambon" at Christmas only to be told that this is in fact the name for a leg of pork, so I had roast pork not gammon.  It isn't the cured legs either as I understand it, as they are supposed to be eaten cold, like Parma Ham, so please what should I be looking for and where?  I live in 12 and we do not have Auchan or Carrefour round here, but we do have  Le Clerc and U or is this an item I should be looking for in la boucherie

Thanks   

[Teamedup]

From what I have heard on the motorways they are just a full cooked ham that is reheated. May not be the same all over, but some places do that.

I buy half salted, I suppose cured pork from Carrefour usually. I prefer their's. But it is more like what my mother would have called a boiled bacon joint and I go through the pieces (in sealed plastic) and get the leanest with the most meat and as little bone as I can see.

I have never seen hams to boil. So I don't think that the french do buy this to cook at home, even in this region where Potee is a traditional dish with similar cured, cooked meats.

[Liz]

Apart from the joints TU mentions the only thing I can think of that has that gammony taste comes in prepacked slices marked Jambon a Griller. Usually 2 to a pack and I think I have only seen it in sort of pre-formed shapes fully trimmed, no fat no rind. Fleury Michon is a brand I have used I think and I am pretty sure they have it in LeClerc on the pre-packed cooked meat counter. Maybe better than nothing!

Liz (29)

[Ron Avery]

Had a look in Hyper U today and bought  "Jarret demi-sel avec Thym romarin"  It looks like a cured hock though quite red and still bleeding.

The instructions are to "cook without desalting in a pressure cooker for 40-45 mins"  It was only  €3 a kg , I got 0 .78 kg for €2.30, so not too expensive a mistake if it all goes wrong. 

Oh well...... in for a centime........ in for a euro:

[Alexis]

If you like cooked ham cold Ron, buy a diablo (sp).  Once cooked it is exactly like well, cooked ham!  It is a bit too mustardy for me so next time I will scrape some of the 'creamy stuff' off.

In Super U here it is in the fresh meat fridges between the poulet and the viande.

[Teamedup]

I find those things too salty in spite of the instructions and always do as the butcher told me some years ago. I boil up the joint up in the pressur cooker, as soon as it comes to pressure, I stop it and get the pressure off and rinse the joint and start afresh.

I'll be interested to know how salty your jarret was.

[Ron Avery]

Well TU,  followed the instructions, did not rinse and I must say it wasn't bad at all, certainly not salty. 

" C'est Francais" I suppose that all over France 000's of French eat hot jambon every day and yet boiling pork is not a common cooking method

 Might try a combination of TU's rinse method and a roast next time to see if that makes any difference, but I have a feeling it may just taste like roast pork.

[Teamedup]

I am pleased that it wasn't too salty, and I may give one a try and not do the rinse method.

They eat lots of boiled salted pork around here, just not what I consider a decent joint of it. We smoke pork joints  and fish and chicken, they are absolutely delicious.

[Teamedup]

I bought a palette salee a couple of days ago, from Carrefour by les foraises. No cooking instructions on it, so I am doing my usual thing with it, especially as it is salee.

[Ron Avery]

I think Iv'e cracked it, I roasted the other "Jarret demi-sel" , no soaking. no boiling and it was lovely, just like a gammon, and not at all salty........just need to fimnd a bigger joint now.

[David]

Ron,

Did you ever find a bigger joint?

We have been trying without success to find a gammon for Christmas and New Year.

In one French cookery book we found a recipe for Jambon Frais, and the photo looked exactly like a proper gammon, but no-one here seems to recognise the term.

David

[Teamedup]

I'll stick by my last answer and these are recooked joints of ham on the motorway services etc. You could always try 'cureing' a leg of pork yourself couldn't you. Can't be that hard can it?

I suppose that the 'jambon' of pork being the leg comes from a leg being a jambe. I love cooked hams, but I do not like the meat on just roasted 'leg of pork' at all and never buy it if I can avoid it. My MIL used to shop for me sometimes and that is what she would always be sold no matter what I had put on my note.

In this region we can get lots of cuts of salted pork, never very big though and always with very big bones in them. These tend to be used when making a potée or choucroute. I just pick one out carefully and always demi-salé and usually if I am lucky, I put them in cold water then bring them up to the boil once, and then replace the water with fresh cold water and boil until cooked. It is rare that I have regretted not soaking overnight in cold water to get rid of the excess salt.

[David]

Teamedup,

In an earlier post you say you smoke your own joints.  Very grateful if you could give some advice as to how to do this.  Does the end result taste like gammon?

David

[Teamedup]

Can't say that it tastes like gammon, I can't say that I am terribly keen on gammon, but the pork is absolutely delicious and like nothing I have ever had before anywhere. In fact it is all wonderful, we haven't done anything yet that we haven't liked. We do whole chickens, roti de porc (sans os) joints, saussise a cuire and all sorts of fish.

My husband does it all so I am not very well versed in what he does. When he decided to give it a try he looked up 'fast' smoking on the internet and took it from there. There are lots of sites and he did a lot of reading before he made a start. And even then it was a bit of trial and error at first and we were worried that things wouldn't be cooked through properly, but it all was and has been a great success. 

What ever we do gets put in a salt solution first for at least an hour and then dried and left in the fridge until the next day and then he spends most of the day with the smoker making sure that the gentle heat is continuous.

 

I must say that I like things done like this far better than any bar b que I have had. Unfortunately I can't give you any more details than that. If you are interested then I certainly think that it is looking up.