First Ham - Fail !

[smokeaddict]

Fellow members, I thought I should share a monumental screw up with the forum, if only to prevent similar errors ! The pictured pork shoulder was brined, injected, salt, sugar, #1 and some spices for five days. Smoked @ 225 for five hours. Looked, tasted just wonderful. As I proceeded to section it for freezing, I came upon a vein of grey/black following a seam of different muscle, no smell, but looked dangerous, so the lot went into the bin. I then remembered during preparation, that the #1 cure wasn't added to the brine. I added it, but didn't re inject the meat, thinking that it will penetrate anyway. Wrong ! Maybe another day in the brine would have done it..........

 

[pops6927]

That's the purpose of injectng the brine into the meat, esp. around the bone, to be able to get the curing agent to the center so it's curing from the inside-out as well as the outside-in.  Without the curing agent in the brine mix for injection, you're adding flavor but no curing, likewise the grey color vs. pink, and it would have taken too long for the cure to have reached the center from the outside-in only.   Once realizing the you didn't add the cure into the initial pumping brine, you could have added it, remixed the brine and re-pumped it then soaked it and it would have turned out ok.  Sorry for the miss, but I'm confident it won't happen again!  

 

[rbranstner]

Live and learn I guess. Thanks for sharing. It can be a bummer for us when we think we have screwed something up and we might not want to share the experience but like you said if someone can learn from it then it wasn't a total loss.

 

[SmokinAl]

It takes guts to share your mistakes. Thank-you!

 

[beer-b-q]

I happens to all of us...

The wife once picked up 6 Butts and a Shoulder and when she got home it was late about 10:00PM and she was tired.  When she got up the next morning the Shoulder was still sitting on the counter because she forgot to put it in the fridge... So into the Trash it went...

Moral is Don't Feel Bad, We Learn From Our Mistakes...

 

[venture]

Great post that may save an illness or a life.  Thanks for sharing.

Good luck and good smoking!