Adventures in Cured Meat

I had received a box of meat in the mail. The note within indicated it was from my prodigal roommate Joe in North Carolina, and the gesture was not out of character for either of us. It was an assortment of vacuum-packed cured country ham in different shapes and sizes, from different providers. Joe wrote that I didn’t need to refrigerate it until opening any of the individual packages, and that the process left the meat very salty — if I wanted to reduce the saltiness, I could — eh, cooking instructions bore me. And he said to cook it like bacon. Fine, I’d just have to look up how to cook bacon.

The box sat on the shelf above my oven for, well, a while. Didn’t need refrigeration so what was the rush? Also, food preparation is not a top priority in this household. But tonight I was staying in because it was very rainy and today’s lunch wasn’t substantial enough to last through the night, plus the Yankees weren’t playing, so I figured: Let’s fry up some meat.

Bacon, cooking bacon. I knew that involved paper towels, and a frying pan. I had both of those things. I googled “how to fry country ham” and skimmed the results. Medium heat. Six to eight minutes a side. Straightforward enough. Let’s do this.

I selected a 10-ounce chunk of ham (have I mentioned I’m not kosher? I’m not kosher) and slit open the packaging with a sharp knife. I rinsed the frying pan as it had possibly not been used since the Clinton administration. The meat was in two pieces, so I put one on a paper towel (check) and the other in the refrigerator (see, I can follow directions). The internet said something about trimming fat so I did a little of that, placed the meat in the pan, and turned the heat to medium (check). The internet said to flip it to avoid burning, I do think it said that, so with a fork I moved the meat around the center of the pan and flipped it every minute and repeated this for 12 minutes because, 6 to 8 minutes a side (check).

I imagined my oven wondering if someone had broken into the apartment, and my smoke detector being on high alert. Indeed, toward the end of the process the pan began to generate some steam or is that smoke, but I had to make it to 12 minutes because I don’t want to die from one of those diseases you get from consuming uncooked meat.

At 12 minutes I turned off the burner and placed the meat on a plate, with the aforementioned fork and knife as my utensils. I put the plate on the chair that I use as a table in front of the TV. But by then I had noticed that the whole room, nay, the whole apartment had a vague smoky look to it. Not bad dark smoke, just kind of a groovy haze. “Oh no,” I thought in an anxious but not panicky way. “I hope the smoke detector doesn’t go off. I hope the building fire alarm doesn’t go off. Those things would be bad.”

I cracked a window, but not all my windows work very well, so it didn’t really stay open. I turned on the fan in the bathroom, not sure what that does, but it seemed worth a shot. I opened my apartment door, realizing that might increase the chance of setting off the building alarm and also add to the common-area cooking scent (hey other people do it so why not me), but also feeling it would give the haze somewhere to go.

Then I sat down and cut into the meat. It looked cooked through, that was good. It tasted very very salty — maybe I should’ve done that thing — but it was pretty good. I guess I’m still kind of hungry. Joe didn’t send any side dishes.

So, I’d label the experiment a qualified success, but, it’s unlikely I’ll repeat it. You know, with the apartment full of smoke and the extreme saltiness.

Anybody want a box of meat?