In this post I’ll show you how you can make a cooked beef ham yourself. With a moderate effort, you will achieve a super tasty result.
The great thing is, when you make your own beef cooked ham, you know exactly what ingredients are in it and where your meat comes from. Those are exactly the things I love about homemade products.
If you want to make a cooked pork ham too… that’s no problem! Take a look at my cooked ham recipe. You can also find even more ham recipes in my ham book.
But first you can find the complete cooked beef ham recipe here as a video or to read through.
Have fun and good luck making it!
Table of Contents
Making your own beef cooked ham – What do you need?
INGREDIENTS PER 1 KG HAM
- 1 kg beef (lower round)
Spices for 1 liter of brine:
- 1 L water
- 90 g salt
- 10 g Cure #1
- 20 g sugar
- 5 g juniper berries
- 2 g caraway seeds
- 2 g garlic powder
- 2 g black pepper
- 1.5 g coriander
- 2 bay leaves
You’ll end up needing about 20-30% of the weight of the meat as brine. So if your ham is 1.5 kg → you’ll need a maximum of 500ml of brine. You can either prepare 1 liter and then use only as much as you need, or scale down the recipe.
Equipment for making beef cooked Ham
Injection Needle + Syringe
To inject the brine into the meat (the process ensures that the meat stays juicy), you will need a injection syringe. If you don’t have one yet, you can buy one for around €10.
Thermometer & cooking pot / Sous Vide cooker
There are several ways to cook your meat.
The easiest way is to use a sous vide cooker. With it you can gently cook the meat at a constant temperature. This reduces the risk of the meat becoming too hot and therefore too dry.
Don’t have one at home? No problem! Use a saucepan and heat the water. To achieve the exact temperature, you still need a thermometer. Both methods achieve the same result. With the saucepan, you should always make sure that your water is consistently hot during the cooking time.
(Optional) Ham press
Personally, I make my ham in a bag and don’t care much for it being nice and round. So, since I cook it sous vide, this piece of equipment is optional.
If you don’t have a sous vide cooker and want to cook the ham in the pot, you will need a ham mold. I can recommend the following set* (which also has a thermometer included).
Making Cooked Beef Ham- Step-By-Step Instructions
1. First, put the juniper, black pepper, coriander, cumin and bay leaves in a mortar and crush them.
2. Put all the spices, salt and Cure in the water and let it come up to a boil. Immediately shut down the heat and let it infuse for 20-30 minutes, and then leave to cool.
3. When the brine is cold, you can drain it through a fine mesh sieve so that you don’t have any pieces in the brine.
4. Now inject the brine (20% of the meat weight) into the ham with a syringe. You can stop as soon as you notice that the brine is running out more and more.
5. Put the ham with the remaining brine (around 10% of the meat weight) into a resealable bag.
6. Now squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag. Try not to squeeze the ham too much (otherwise the brine will leak out again). Then you can close the bag.
7.The ham must now be cured for 2-3 days in the refrigerator (if you have a larger piece of ham, you must cure it longer). Important: Turn the ham once a day so that the brine can penetrate the meat from all sides and is well distributed.
8. After 3 days, it is now time to cook your beef ham. Use the method that suits you best. When cooking sous vide, your ham needs about 2 hours at 67 C° (152,6 F°). Your goal is to achieve a core temperature of 64 (147,2 F°) to a maximum of 67 C° (152,6 F°). Otherwise, the ham will become dry.
Important: Make sure that the ham is always sufficiently covered with water.
As an alternative to the sous vide cooker, you can use a cooking pot with a ham press. To accomplish this, transfer the ham from the bag into the device and press. Then put the ham press in a pot and heat up to about 80 C° (176 F°) and cook for about 2h. Your goal here is also to achieve a core temperature of 64 to a maximum of 67 C°. Important: Measure the core and water temperature regularly. Nothing is more annoying than all the effort and not being able to enjoy the good products afterwards.
9. Once the ham is cooked, you can drain the juice.
10. Let your beef ham rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
11. Optional: You can dab the ham with a kitchen towel to remove any leaked out protein.
12. Your cooked beef ham is ready. Enjoy it.
How long is the shelf life of the cooked beef ham?
Your cooked beef ham will keep covered in the refrigerator for about a week. The alternative is to vacuum pack the ham in portions. When vacuumed, it should keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks. You can also freeze it. This will increase the shelf life many times over.
I wonder if I could use instead of beef elk meat or venison meat
Yes definitely. Should work as well.
That looks very nice Daniel, would it be like Corned Beef usually made from a cut of Beef called Silverside or Beef Outside. I will make some to see if there is any comparison. Thanks for the recipe!!