Recipe 17: Sweet Ham

Ingredients:

3 kilos (pig ) pig’s leg without the bones; select one with the skin and fat intact
9 tablespoons sugar
8 tablespoons salt
1-1/2 tablespoons vet sin
2 tablespoons Prague powder (instead of saltpeter or salt)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.

2. Rub these seasonings well into the meat. Set aside the seasoned meat in a glass bowl. Cover and refrigerate for one day.

3. Tie the ham tightly into a ball with string (I use cotton crochet string). Remove/Drain the meat juices that were left in the glass bowl and set aside for injecting.

4. Using a huge syringe (you can buy the largest syringe at Mercury drugstore for less than 20 pesos), inject the flavored meat juice all around the ham in small doses.

5. Set the ham aside in the glass bowl (covered) inside the refrigerator. Repeat the injecting process every day until no juices remain.

6. Keep the ham inside a plastic bag in the freezer for a month or more.

TO COOK THE HAM:

1. Add enough pineapple juice to cover the ham at about 3/4’s level (not quite to the top of the ham).

2. Add the following:
Brown sugar, just enough to sweeten the pineapple juice mixture
Bay leaves
Crushed garlic

3. Cook the mixture in a heavy, Teflon-type pot over a low fire until the meat becomes tender. Watch out that the meat does not get burned. You can prevent over-browning by turning the meat from time to time.

4. Cool the meat and slice into pieces.