Country Ham

The slow-cured country ham is the opposite of fast food.

It is also one of North Carolina's oldest culinary traditions.

Salty. Leathery. The skin dried so hard, it can take a band saw to cut through it. Before cooking, you have to heft it into a sink and scrub off the mold. This is not most people's definition of food. But in the Carolinas, it's a good description of one of our most important contributions to the American food story: Slow-cured country ham.

It once kept people in this part of the world alive through tough winters. It added flavor and protein to meager plates of grits and greens. It was so prized, colonists made scarce cash by shipping it to Europe for the gentry.

Today, slow-cured country ham is not much more than a lingering taste of Carolinas history. In supermarkets, you usually find mass-produced versions that use climate controls to hurry the process.

What is hard to find is the original kind, treated with nothing but salt and maybe sugar, and hung in a room with open windows, exposed to months of spring breezes and humid summer nights.