country ham...the conclusion
I did well at changing the water in the cooler twice a day, once before I went to work and again in the evening before bed. I just used water from the hose each time.

I added ice to the water for the first two days but none at all on Saturday. Temps were in the low 70's that day and for a time I was concerned about the ham spoiling. In the end it was fine. I've come away with the impression that the average country ham is quite the resolute object, both physically and chemically. If cured properly, the ham should prove largely immune to the nasties that would go to work on a raw piece of meat floating in coolish water for a day.

In the end the ham soaked for about 42 hours. God help me but I did taste the smallest bit of ham water from the cooler prior to draining it for the last time. I couldn't taste any salt so I figured that while things were likely still in a hypotonic state, the osmotic pressure had abated to the point where further soaking would yield deminishing returns vis-a-vis reducing the salt content in the ham.

Here's a pic of the ham after leaving the cooler and being rinsed again. The smell is still an important detail here since from the start this thing never smelled "good". It did not smell spoiled or rotten either, but there is a cloying/earthy/meaty aspect to the smell that is quite unique and not very appetizing. The soaking lessened this smell but it never disappeared completely.



From here I inserted a probe thermometer, filled the pan with about 2 inches of water and added some brown sugar, pepper corns, allspice berries and cinnamon. I covered the whole thing with heavy foil and put it into a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes, dropped the oven to 250 and went to bed. It went in the oven just prior to midnight on Saturday night.

When I checked the temp at around 7am Sunday morning, it read 170 degrees (at bit higher than I'd have liked) so I turned off the oven and took the pan out, leaving it uncovered to cool while we went to church and breakfast.

When I first woke up I'll admit to being sad that the house smelled like the odd smell, but just in the background, was the familiar and welcome smell of sweet porkiness, familiar from times Dad and I have finished pork butts off in an oven. This familiar smell was the first ray of light that helped make me feel like this experiment might actually yield something edible.

Here it is out of the oven and cooled.



From here I sharpened up my boning knife and went to work cutting off the skin and fat from around the ham. The fat was mostly rendered, but still a bit tricky to get a good clean trim without nicking the meat below. The trimming process took about 15 minutes.

Here is a pic with the skin and fat removed...and for the first time the object starts to look like food. Perhaps not hugely appetizing, but when I got done I was happy to see that it looked like ham.



And now the final step was to carve out some slices, which I did again with my boning knife as I don't own a carving knife. This was not too tough, following advice I read in multiple places about how to carve a whole ham. I did at least as well as this guy, although the glaze/coating on the ham he's working on makes clear that I have plenty to learn in other arenas.



In the end, I thought it tasted very good. The meat is very lean and pretty dry; the thin slicing helps make it easier to chew. The flavor is intensely...hammy and only later does the salt shock your palate and back of your mouth. After eating a few slices, I had an odd feeling in my tummy because of the salt intake. But as soon as that faded, I wanted to have another bite. I find myself snacking on the leftovers now as I write this.

We served a dry reisling with it, which I think went well due to the sweetness. Reen also made a salad with strawberries and a raspberry vinaigrette, again the sweetness of this helped round out the whole meal.

The common application of serving thin sliced country ham over biscuits with white gravy would be really great I think. I look forward to trying that soon. Soup is also another likely candidate for how best to use the huge amount of leftovers.