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Transcription: [00:13:52]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
Now how do you cure your hams? I know that's one of your favorite products down there, how do you cure them?

[00:13:53]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
A ham is a sort of a long drawn out process to do it like we do it. But, uh, it is a way that it will keep forever. We take a ham and on about the center of that ham, there is a blade bone that sticks up.
[00:14:09]
We take out our knife and we run it right down by that blade bone and cut a little incision all the way to the center bone and when you do that you open that hole up a little bit, with your fingers, and pack that hole full of, pure, white table salt.
[00:14:24]
Then just lightly spread all over the whole ham, with your hand, just a light layer of salt, don't plaster it. And you lay that ham back in the cooler flat down with the skin side down and the hole up, and you leave it that way one week.
[00:14:43]
And after one week you go in and you turn that ham over. And during that week, that hole that we have made in the ham with the salt in it, the salt will completely run that bone from one end to the other, and so then you turn it over, that drains your salty water out and all of the water that might have been in that ham, it just drains out.
[00:15:06]
And say on a 12 pound ham, a minimum of 40 days is enough to leave it laying with the hole down. Just don't bother it. You don't even have to look at it. And when you go back to get it to- go in the smokehouse, ready, it will be slimy lookin' and dirty lookin' with you know, but all you have to do is just wash it off with some clean clear warm
[00:15:30]
or cold water, it doesn't matter, just wash it pretty and clean, and it'll be pretty again. And then just take it to your smokehouse, and hang it up, and get your fire going and get it up to about 120 or 30 degrees.
[00:15:46]
That way, with the ham hanging down, if you have any moisture left in it, it will drain it and pull it out. And then after that, the smoke is strictly for putting the flavor in the ham and the color, and you smoke that ham just as fast or slow as you want to,
[00:16:06]
and just, the darker the color the more smoke you have on it. And if you don't like much smoke, don't smoke it 15 days. Just look at the color of it. When it starts turning a little tan, you have a light smoke. And the darker you get it, the more smoke
[00:16:23]
you've got on it. and you can over smoke it. you'll have it to where it tastes like smoke too much and it's not good. So, like, we're smoking over there with an open pit inside smokehouse, it'll take at least 2 weeks to brown 'em as much as those are browned.
[00:16:40]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
Mm, I see it. So, the smoking to the ham really just adds a flavor to it. It doesn't aid in the curing process at all.
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
[[Overlapping]] The flavor and the color. That's right. No.
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
[[overlapping]] It doesn't help to cure it. It's already cured when it goes into the smokehouse.
[00:16:53]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
[[overlapping]] When it went into the smokehouse, it was completely cured, for it would not spoil. Now you have to take care of meat just like you do anything else. Once you get that ham smoked, the best place to put it is in a clear, clean, cool space. You know place. You can cover it with cheesecloth, or
[00:17:13]
you can put it in a brown paper bag and tie it up, and hang it from a rafter or something or other. The main thing is keeping insects, flies, away from it. They, you know, they would ruin any kind of food.
[00:17:27]
So, this way, two years from now, you can take that ham out of that bag or that netting and it would still be good to eat.
[00:17:36]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
Well how do you prepare a ham like that Ms. Bentley, when you take it out after two years?
[00:17:41]
{SPEAKER name="Mrs. Bentley"}
You can either bake or fry it. We like it fried real good, but then I put brown sugar and mustard and pineapple on it and bake it and we like it that way also.
[00:17:54]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
Do you ever boil a ham?
{SPEAKER name="Mrs. Bentley"}
We boil the fresh ones, but I don't think you would want to boil a cured one, I've never tried that. Bakin's fine, and then just slice and fry it. I think those would be the two main ways to prepare it.
[00:18:09]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
So to fry it and then to bake it for the cured, smoked ham.
{SPEAKER name="Mrs. Bentley"}
[[overlapping]] That's right, either fry or bake it.
[00:18:17]
{SPEAKER name="J.L. Harris"}
Mhm ok, another thing you make that we didn't ask about the last time you were on our narrative stage, is souse. You make that on Tuesdays or do you make that at the end of the week when you have some leftover meat? How do you make that?

Transcription Notes:
The hostess is not Gerri Johnson, but J.L. Harris as noted in other parts of this project.