Homemade Deli Meat — With and Without Ham Maker

writ­ten 4/15/2024, updat­ed 7/21/2025

Ham Maker Method

Using a Ham Mak­er is real­ly the eas­i­est way to make a formed meat, espe­cial­ly if you want to mix sev­er­al cuts or meats togeth­er. It can also be used with­out mix­ing meats or grind­ing them. Ham Mak­ers make the wrap­ping step a cinch.

Ingredients and Supplies

Meat, Sea­son­ings, Water, Ham Mak­er, Cook­ing Bag, Tall Pot, Pot Ther­mome­ter, Stove, Refrig­er­a­tor

Time

30 min­utes Prep + 2 hours Cook + overnight Chill

Process

• Wash your Ham Mak­er if you haven’t
• Fill a tall pot with Water, and heat it up on the stove (Tar­get: 182–195F)
• Choose your meat:

• Pre­pare your selec­tion by remov­ing veins, bones, and sinews. Decide if you want to keep, and how much, any fat
• If using a meat mix­ture, chop, mince, grind, process, or any com­bi­na­tion as desired
• Sea­son your choice of meat, to taste
• Allow to set for a few min­utes
• In the mean­time, line the Ham Mak­er with a Cook­ing Bag
• When ready, place meat into the can­is­ter
• Twist the top of the bag closed
• Close the Ham Mak­er with the press and lid, then insert the ther­mome­ter
• When water in the pot reach­es between 180 — 195F, place the full Ham Mak­er in the water, mak­ing sure the water lev­el sits above the fill line of the meat inside
• Keep the tem­per­a­ture steady (I set my gas stove low-medi­um)
• Cook until inter­nal tem­per­a­ture reach­es the safe cook­ing tem­per­a­ture for your meat choice, about 2 hours
• Place the hot Ham Mak­er on a hot pad in the refrig­er­a­tor and cool overnight
• When ful­ly cooled, run can­is­ter under warm water to release the meat

Slice and Enjoy!

Pictures!!

Ta-DAAA!! The hole is where both the twist top of the plas­tic and the ther­mome­ter when in. You can see the tex­ture dif­fer­ences from the dif­fer­ent cuts/processing of the meat. Deli­cious!

No Ham Maker Methods

Sous Vide and Smoked are two meth­ods of mak­ing this. If you don’t have a sous vide device, there are alter­na­tives

Sous Vide Method

There are dif­fer­ent ways to sous vide with­out actu­al­ly using a sous vide device. You can use an oven, a Dutch oven or a pot, and even a rice cook­er.

Ingredients and Supplies

Meat, Sea­son­ings, Mix­ing Bowls, Water, Pot/Oven/Rice Cook­er, Ther­mome­ter, Refrig­er­a­tor

Time

35 min­utes Prep + 2 hours Cook + Chill

Pictures (Oven Method)

Smoker Method

This method uses a meat grinder then a meat smok­er. You can use a ded­i­cat­ed meat grinder, a meat grind­ing attach­ment for a stand mix­er, or even just a food proces­sor

Prepare Meat

• Decide on ratio of meat cuts (e.g. [½ : ½] ratio of [skinned chick­en thigh : skin­less chick­en breast])
• Cut into small pieces

Grind/Process

• Grind/Process 1st time
• Grind/Process 2nd time
• Add any desired sea­son­ings and half of total water

• Grind/Process 3rd time

Wrap

• Place ground meat in a mix­ing bowl
• Add the rest of the water, and then mix togeth­er real­ly well (should be very sticky)
• Pump or stuff into an edi­ble or ined­i­ble cas­ing (100mm is the largest size I could find on Ama­zon)
• Secure the end

Cooking

• Set smok­er to 120F (50C), NO smoke, NO humid­i­ty, OPEN dampers to dry the cas­ing for 1 hour
• Set to 130F (55C), ADD smoke, ADD humid­i­ty (water pan), ¾ damper for 1 hour
• 145F (65C) for 1 hour
• 160F (72F) for 1 hour
• 175F (75C) until inter­nal tem­per­a­ture reach­es 160F (72C)
• Place in an ice bath to sep­a­rate the cas­ing and the meat

Slice and enjoy!

Notes

Attempt 4/14/24: Used Oven Sous Vide Method. Should have added some­thing like corn­starch in the meat mix­ture to give it some adher­ence. That and/or chang­ing the ratio to add more ground/pureed meat to fill in the gaps in the meat, while tak­ing away from the orig­i­nal cubed meat. Even if cub­ing (altered the recipe direc­tions to use small­er pieces), then should process a lit­tle. 3 degrees of food proces­sor chop­ping to make the final prod­uct smoother would be more ide­al. The way this end­ed up was more of a head­cheese. There IS an obvi­ous com­plex tex­ture, but it all fell apart eas­i­ly. The 3 dif­fer­ent fla­vor pro­files gave it GREAT taste. Made the mis­take of not think­ing about the cook­ing ves­sel until after rolling the meat. Should have cut it in half and then would have been able to have 2 small­er hams and able to cook it inside of the Dutch oven with the water filled to the top. The way I had it, the water did­n’t even cov­er the whole meat log, so cook­ing was very uneven. Unsure of how to test inter­nal tem­per­a­ture of meat log with­out mak­ing a mess. Cook­ing @ 215F took about 2.5 to 3 hours total. Used way too much plas­tic wrap and was­n’t able to use a lid­ded dish, just 2 lay­ers of foil. Meat used: Chick­en. 3 thighs, 1.5 breast, ¼lb ground chick­en (hand squeezed to pul­ver­ize). NEXT TIME: more ground chick­en, less cubed breast. Add corn­starch for smooth­ness and adher­ence. Small­er logs for more even cook­ing. More food pro­cess­ing. Maybe try using meat cas­ing.

7/21/2025: Used Ham Mak­er

• Sous Vide cook­ing charts rec­om­mend cook­ing chick­en at 150F for 1–3 hours.
• A Ham Mak­er is a MUCH eas­i­er method of doing this. It’s a met­al con­trap­tion with a spring in it that fits right into a stock pot on the stove and does the same thing neat­ly. How­ev­er, if you don’t have one and don’t want one, this is fine, too.
• There’s always the option of bak­ing or broil­ing it after the fact for a pos­si­ble crust or rind? Haven’t attempt­ed that yet