How I Made Tasso Ham

Thanks.

looks good but that is a lot of f'king tasso.

It's cured, so more than likely 3 months refrigerated and vacuum packed. I'll vacuum pack it and keep refrigerated for about 5 weeks and then freeze whatever I don't use or give away.

Yes, you can use less time for thinner pieces. However, brining a few extra days is not going to hurt it at all, so don't worry about curing it for too long. You only need to worry about not curing it long enough.

So, in order to cure, the brine needs time to work into the meat all the way through to the center. The thinner the pieces, the less time it needs. The thicker, the more time it needs.

If you zoom in that one picture I posted, it looks like the center has a very small slight gray spot. Those pieces probably should have cured an extra day to be done right.

For large cuts of meat (hams, brisket, pork loin, etc.), I always inject the brine in the meat before letting it brine for days. It speeds up the brining immensely. The only reason I didn't inject the tasso before brining was because they were thin.

That piece I cut was maybe a 2-inch diameter and it looks like it needed 5 days without injecting.

I went ahead and measured so I could tell you. The larger diameters are 2-inches. That’s relatively large for tasso, but not too big. I wouldn’t go larger. Average was 1-2 inch thickness and about 5-inch long.

As mentioned, I had ham trimmings, so the pieces were already cut the size you saw. If I was cutting the meat, I’d aim for 1-inch to 1.5-inch thickness max. You can make them any size though, to your preference.