[533] Chicken Ham Postscript - 2007/12/26 (Wed)

A really amazing lot of people have back pain. Probably has something to do with being born a bipedal human being. Even with how many years of chiropracty and acupuncture, it continues its circuit, and I always believe I'm cured, but. (^^;)

It always comes back right when I've recovered, like, whew, and forgotten about it. Maan, let's all take care of ourselves, okay.

So, the essential chicken ham. If you look it up on the net, I think you'll find recepies with various prescription, but I'll outline it for you.

Prepare
Chicken Breast meat (Must be breast meat)
Sugar
Salt
Pepper
Zip Lock bag
Saran wrap
A pan in which you can entirely submerge the chicken meat
Extras (^_^)

First, remove theskin from the ckicken and rub in a teaspoonfull of sugar. When moisture appears, repeat the process, this time with salt. An ample tablespoon should be good. Similarly, rub this in thoroughly.
To close, rub in a little bit of pepper, and seal it in a zip lock bag with as much of the air taken out as possible.

So, leave it alone for two or three days in the refridgerator. (^_^) If you try to touch it and it's got a sort of crunchy texture, your preperations were OK. Wash away the oxidised fat. (Water about 32~33 degrees) * After that, soak it in a salt water mixture (about 1.5% concentration) for 30 minutes to an hour. Incidentally, I soak it for an hour.

Firmly wipe it dry with kitchen paper, roll it up in Saran Wrap like a maki roll with as firm pressure as you can. Candy wrap the ends, and, taking the air out from inside, shape it up like a ham. Ideally, wrapping it round and round like an octopus would be good.

After that, put in the water and boil it 30 minutes over low heat, about 70~75 degrees, or you can put it in simmering water and leave it for 6~8 minutes with the lid open and the flame up until it comes to a boil again, I think either way should be fine. If you don't submerge the chicken meat completely in the water, it won't work, so please be careful.

When it cools down, take it out, put it to bed in the fridge for up to half a day and voila, 'Chicken Ham' is complete!!

When you boil it, make holes with a toothpick in the wrap, and you'll get a nicely flavored chicken stock. If you don't make holes, the stock won't form, but the flavor of the chicken will concentrated in the ham.

People's tastes are widely scattered, so please try some fine tuning a couple of times of the boiling time and salt mixture. Mine was only a little salty. If you add mayonaise, it's delicious. (^_^)

If you cut it the middle is a just a little pink, like a ham. The flavor might be described as chicken-style ham, too.

For people who've never made it, definitely take up the challenge, and please tell us youre inpressions.

Well then well then~ Only one more week in the year~


[ * all degree mesurements are of course in celcius. after all the cooking tips he spouts, a) i'm going to start referring to him as Cooking Mama, and b) i'm going to put recepie translation experience on my resume. ]