This week on AOL's lifestyle channel Lou and I looked at heroic ham. It's one of the best forms of meat that works for breakfast, lunch and dinner, yet all too often is poorly made watery reformed pap. One of my favourite ways to eat a nice hand sliced piece of cold ham is with chips and a fried egg. This also happens to be one of Simon Hopkinson's favourite meals.
Once upon a time, British hams stood pork shoulder to pork shoulder with their continental cousins in quality and fame. Our many regional hams were revered across Europe as a jamon iberico from Spain, a Parma ham from Italy or a Jambon de Bayonne from France, not so anymore…. Each region in the UK has – or in some cases had – a specific cure associated with it. Wiltshire was the epicentre of ham production in England, thanks to whey from nearby Somerset's cheese production which was fed to pigs, as well as plenty of additional farming waste and forests for the pigs to roam in. [MORE]
Tasty looking image on the homepage used under Creative Commons licence and taken by Sk8geek