Smoking the Ham

I found a really cool article on how to turn your grill into a smoker. Friends JP & Melissa had done it with their charcoal grill, so we were all set to use our charcoal grill for smoking, then I realized that we could use the GAS GRILL!!!

The primary benefit of this is that our gas grill has a built in temperature gage. We put wood chips from buddy Mike into a cast iron skillet, lit 'er up, and smoked the giant hunk of meat for about 4 hours until the meat thermometer read 170.

Later, when we sliced into the ham, we were shocked to discover (gasp) that the middle part was still undercooked. A quick trip through the microwave finished off a segment for dinner, and we baked the ham for another 3 hours. Total cooking time: 16 hours.

Here is what we will do differently next time:

• Brine it for 4 days
• Cut it into 2 smaller hams with a kitchen-designated hand saw
• Weigh the pieces
• bake it completely on the smoker - since it is easy to maintain a temperature of 325

The done-ness is hard to measure due to the leg bone. The point of the meat thermometer touched the bone, but manages to measure a bit up from the bone, so the meat right along the bone is lower in temperature than the place you end up testing.