Ham, Ham Broth and Lard

Last week Meijers had Cooks Choice bone in hams on sale for 87 cents a pound. I bought 4 of them. One I  bought for Easter Dinner and the other 3 I bought for canning. Nice looking hams aren't they?

As you can see by the price label I was not kidding when I said I got them for 87 cents a pound. :)

I trimmed as much of the skin and fat off of each of the whole hams and put is aside to make rich ham stock.

Then I cut all the meat off the bones as I could get and tossed the bones in with the skin and fat.

After all the meat was cut off the bones I trimmed all the meat that I got off the bones of excess fat and gristle, then cut the meat into one inch chunks. I decided to raw pack the ham and nit use any broth or water to can it with. I packed the jars as full as I could with the ham.

     
Wiped the jars rims with a mixture of white vinegar and water to make sure there was no grease on the rims to cause seal failure. Applied the two piece caps and processed for 75 minutes in a pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure. I used pints but if I had used quarts I would have processed for 90 minutes.

I got 19 pints of ham from the 3 hams. The meat came out looking more like browned beef then ham but I opened one the next day and it tastes like ham. :) I will be using this ham in baked beans, ham salad, ham and beans and scalloped potatoes. It could even be drained and put on top of a salad or home made pizza.

Even though I got 19 pints of ham I wasn't through there. I still had 3 pints of cubed ham that I didn't can because I ran out of pint jars plus all the fat and meat still on the bones. I decided to make ham broth out of the scraps and set the cubed ham aside.

I placed all the scraps in a big stock pot and covered with water, four carrots, 4 stalks of celery and two bay leaves. I brought it all to a simmer and simmered for 3 hours.

When the broth was done I strained it in to large bowls which I sat in the sinks which were full of ice water to let it chill down before placing it in the refrigerator overnight to let the fat rise to the top and harden. The next morning I took the broth out of the refrigerator and skimmed the fat off and placed it in a sauce pan. 

I heated the fat over low heat until all the water was boiled out then placed the heated lard in 12 jars, wipe the rims of the jars with a water/vinegar mix and added the two piece caps. I has no intentions of canning the lard so I just set the jars aside till they cooled enough to place in the refrigerator. Once the lard had hardened I place it in the freezer for long term storage. I will set in a jar in the refrigerator one at a time and use to make biscuits and corn bread. 

As you can see I did not get all the water boiled out but that is okay. I will be able to scrape that off when I use the lard since it will be congealed. :)

Tomorrow I will show you what I did with the broth and the extra cubed ham. For now let's just say that I got a lot more meals out of a ham then if I just baked it and served it for dinner. Then 87 cents a pound I paid for it went a long way in helping to make sure my family has plenty of good food to eat through the year.:)