“Just before Easter the air in St. Mary’s County is permeated by the odor of stuffed ham a-cooking.” – Maryland Farewell To Lent, Katherine Scarborough, Baltimore Sun 1950
It takes over an hour to drive from Baltimore to B.K. Miller Meats, but St. Mary’s County resident Bertha Hunt told me that that is where she gets her corned hams, so I made the trip.
When you enter B.K. Miller, you walk through a large liquor store, towards a back doorway. As I passed the aisles of booze I wondered what vestige of a deli I was about to encounter. To my surprise and delight, the back room was bustling. A woman was cooking up sausages and the smell was heavenly. I spotted scrapple, braunschweiger, liver pudding(!), and all the hog parts that are fit to eat stacked within the fridges and freezers.
After I requested the corned ham I’d called ahead for, some attention was drawn to me. “Are you going to stuff it?”, a woman asked. She fondly recalled stuffed ham and we chatted as I filled my arms with impulse purchase charcuterie. The atmosphere was jovial; some people were probably grabbing some meats to grill on that nice day. Others shopped for specialty items.
I lugged my ham to the front, glancing around at the liquor selection as I made my way to the register. It takes a long time to cook a ham… Alas, my hands were quite full.
It is fortunate that I enjoyed the B.K. Miller atmosphere so much, because it turns out, in a bit of irritating irony, that the ham was produced right in Baltimore by the Manger Packing Corporation.
When I’d inquired about a corned ham from a place in Catonsville, they told me that they don’t get corned hams until “closer to the holidays.” Thinking that they meant some time in April, I asked, “how much closer…?” “November” was the reply. “Oh,” I realized. “THOSE holidays.”
Stuffed ham may be available year-round in St. Mary’s county, but their Catholic origins means that stuffed ham for Easter is a must.
Baltimore Sun, 1960
Whenever I enjoy stuffed ham I am always reminded of how odd it is that it hasn’t “taken off” as at least a minor trend in the upscale restaurants that peddle in heritage foods. I will no longer wonder about that because now I know – stuffed ham is a real pain in the ass to make, and the options are a minefield of treacherous missteps.
The first point of contention is the type of ham. A 1950 Baltimore Sun article about Easter meals cited a St. Mary’s County authority, Mrs. Mervill Loker, who used a smoked ham. Others emphatically disavow this practice. Since a corned ham is the most commonly used, (and the most obscure and annoying item to get) I figured that was the way to go.
Once the corned ham has been rinsed comes the first real dilemma – to bone or not to bone? In 1988, Sun writer Rob Kasper explored the controversy.
“Ham Bone advocates cook the ham with the bone still in it. They argue that the bone gives flavor and posture to a stuffed ham,” he wrote. But then, “Anti-bone forces contend that with the bone removed, the ham is easier to slice and ‘you can fill up the bone-hole with more stuffing.’”
While that is a valid and intriguing point, I have no idea how to debone a ham. The bone stays in the ham.
I don’t even know where to begin with the whole greens thing. Cabbage, Kale, Mustard, Cress? While many people say this is a regional preference, I went ahead and got what was easily available at the farmer’s market, which happened to be a little of everything.
In “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” Colonel John Douglas Freeman includes shallot tops. Since I happened to have some in my garden I threw those in as well. Modern recipes blanch the greens first; I did this because it shrunk them down a bit, allowing me to pack more into the ham.
This is where it gets embarrassing. I don’t know my ham anatomy very well. I did get a few holes stuffed well (with the aid of a wooden spoon handle), but a real expert would have fit WAY more stuffing-holes into the ham. Live and learn.
The next ordeal came when it was time to begin the 5-hour boiling process. My pot was too small. I ended up having to borrow a turkey frying pot from my mom. Honestly, if I do this again I might just boil the whole thing on the turkey-fryer burner and spend the day outside.
There are many Baltimore Sun articles about stuffed ham, but the St. Mary’s College Slackwater oral histories offer local accounts. Interviewees talk about growing greens to stuff the ham with, personal preferences, learning to make the ham, and of course their own processes. An interview with Mary Drury goes into the most detail, describing “the tedious job, almost agony sometimes, of stuffing it until you have as much stuffing in there as you can get in the ham.”
I certainly didn’t find it agonizing but it is a lot of work.
When the process was done I was left with several byproducts – the thick layer of fat from my ham, some extra greens, and gallons of pot liquor. The agonizing thing was admitting that I could only use a few quarts of the pot liquor at most.
According to Rob Kasper’s 1988 Sun piece, “Almost everybody agrees that the best way to enjoy a stuffed ham is to slice it and serve it in sandwiches.” The rest of the particulars are enough to make your head spin but that is some advice I am glad to take. Now, for potato bread, white bread, or wheat….
