Ham: A Savor the South Cookbook

Savor the South Cookbooks

by Damon Lee Fowler

While the hindquarters of swine have been preserved in salt the world over for thousands of years, there are only a few places on earth where ham is as celebrated or integral to the cuisine as it is in the American South. To begin to understand the place that this iconic food holds in the hearts of southerners, Damon Lee Fowler writes, one has only to step into the historic smokehouse of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and take a deep breath. More than a century after the last hams were hung to smoke in that chamber, the aroma of salt, smoke, and air-dried pork still permeates the rough masonry walls and clay floor, filling the air with its earthy perfume.

Even after centuries of culinary transformations throughout the South, that fragrance lingers in kitchens throughout the region. Ham 's 55 recipes bring home the love in just about every way—brine- or dry-cured, smoked or not, boiled, baked, glazed, honey-baked and spiral cut, thin-sliced and piled into biscuits and sandwiches, fried up with eggs, with grits, with redeye gravy, added for savor to soups, casseroles, poultry, seafood, and, yes, the vegetable pot. Fowler also includes recipes inspired by Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish dishes, and provides a guide to basic terminology and cooking methods.

Genres: Cookbooks

152 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2023

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Savor the South cookbook series and the Ham cookbook does not disappoint. As Fowler says in the Introduction, "Southerners and Ham: a Love Story" and that is the truth. You almost can't talk about Southern cooking without talking about ham and it's history in Southern food. Fowler gives a good introduction to ham and it's history and also how it's made today. I knew from growing up in the South that soup is not worth making if you don't have a hambone to season it, but as Fowler says in the introduction to the Appetizers and Soups section, "...ham is to soup what gin is to martinis: You can make one without it, but in our estimation it's going to be a thin shadow of what it might have been." (p. 21) There are definitely a few recipes I'd like to try and I never thought about making a ham broth to flavor soups or greens before this cookbook - I had always tried to have hambones or chunks on hand in the freezer, but I like this idea a lot. Overall, another great Savor the South cookbook!