Tag: meat

Homemade Deli Meat — With and Without Ham Maker

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

The juices that came out of this… YUM

What

Mak­ing deli meat at home by com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent cuts of meat (can be same kind of meat or a mix­ture) with and with­out a Ham Mak­er

Why

Abil­i­ty to con­trol what’s put inside your own cold cuts, and can be cheap­er

Time and Effort

Time: A few hours

Effort: Easy

Ingre­di­ents

Meat

Sea­son­ings

Sup­plies

Mix­ing Bowls

Cut­ting Board

Knives/Meat Grinder/Processor

Ham Mak­er

Plas­tic Wrap/Sausage Wrap­ping

Foil

Pot/Rice Cooker/Oven

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.

Ham Mak­er

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:

Whole Meat — an entire piece of meat, uncut (e.g. pork loin, pork shoul­der, whole breast)

Mixed Meat — a formed mash of dif­fer­ent cuts or com­bi­na­tions of meat types

  • 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!!

Chopped, Minced, and Processed
Remov­ing Air Bub­bles
Squish
It’s Hot!
Chill­ing
Open­ing
Pour out the juice
Release
Still in Bag
There it is!

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

Prepare Meat

*Pic­tures below

  • Remove any veins, sinews, and bones. Remove or use fat as desired
  • Choose your meat:

Whole Meat — an entire piece of meat, uncut (e.g. pork loin, pork shoul­der, whole breast)

Mixed Meat — a formed mash of dif­fer­ent cuts or com­bi­na­tions of meat types

  • If using Mixed Meat, pre­pare a [diced: minced: ground] meat ratio of [¾ : ½ : ⅓ lb] or [350 : 250 : 150 g]
  • Sea­son the meat, to taste (If desired, sea­son each tex­ture a bit dif­fer­ent­ly for a com­bined com­plex fla­vor)

Wrap

  • Set out a dou­ble lay­er of plas­tic wrap and sprin­kle half with smoked papri­ka and what­ev­er else you’d like
  • Turn out meat mix­ture
  • Tight­ly roll into desired shape and size

NOTE: Make sure wrapped meat log(s) will fit into your cook­ing imple­ment so it can be cov­ered in water!

  • Secure the ends

Cooking

Here are 3 meth­ods of cook­ing the meat ham with­out ded­i­cat­ed Sous Vide equip­ment

Pot Method

  • Fill with water
  • Bring water to a boil
  • Place meat log into the water (make sure meat is and will be ful­ly sub­merged the whole time)
  • Bring to a boil again
  • Turn off heat and place lid tight­ly on top
  • Leave for 45 min­utes to 1 hour
  • Check for done­ness with ther­mome­ter
  • Repeat if nec­es­sary
  • When done, let cool and enjoy, or chill in refrig­er­a­tor

Oven Method

  • Pre­heat oven to 215 — 220F (100C)
  • Select a deep dish or oven safe pot
  • Boil enough water to fill
  • Pour in boil­ing water
  • Place meat log
  • Cov­er with parch­ment paper
  • Cov­er that in foil and/or a tight lid
  • Cook for 1–3 hours until 160F (75C)
  • Remove from oven
  • Place in an ice bath and/or refrig­er­a­tor until inter­nal tem­per­a­ture is 50F (10C)

Rice Cook­er Method

  • Boil water
  • Pour boiled water into rice cook­er
  • Using a ther­mome­ter, mix in cold water until water tem­per­a­ture is some­where between 175–195F
  • Place meat log into water
  • Close
  • Set rice cook­er to Keep Warm
  • Cook for about 2 hours
  • Be sure tem­per­a­ture is safe for choice of meat
  • Let cool then enjoy or chill in refrig­er­a­tor

Pictures (Oven Method)

Ground
Cubed
Diced
Fla­vor­ing
sea­son­ing
Com­bine
Let sit
Rolling
…Yeah it does­n’t fit well. Pour­ing in the boil­ing water
Wax paper
Foil and in the oven
Ice bath
Ta Da!! Taste was ON POINT

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

NOTE: For 1lb of meat, add 20ml (⅔ oz. or 1⅓ Tbsp) of water

Total ratio is 40mL water per 1lb (40mL = 1⅓ oz = 2¾ Tbsp)

  • 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

Overview: 1 hour Dry + 1 hour @ 130F + 1 hour @ 145F + 1 hour @ 160F + more @ 175F

Total: ~5 hours

  • 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

Smoking Meat in Oven with Wood Chips

writ­ten 3/4/2024

Background

I want­ed to try using smok­ing wood chips inside of the house because I did­n’t want to pull out the smok­er and the chim­ney starter, etc, and I just want­ed to imbue smoke in half of a chick­en. After an exten­sive online search on pages over­run by adver­tise­ments and liq­uid smoke, I decid­ed to just wing it. Here are my notes:

So, is it Possible?

In a word: yes. If you don’t mind your house smelling like a smoke­house for a few days

**WARNING: Please exer­cise cau­tion when deal­ing with fire, open flames, and char­coal. Have heat rat­ed gloves, oth­er fire pre­cau­tions, tongs, etc. When deal­ing with char­coal, have a ves­sel or means to starve it of oxy­gen, and a fire extin­guish­er. ALWAYS make sure to dis­pose of refuse prop­er­ly**

Materials

Small wood chip pieces

BIC flex­i­ble lighter

Small bak­ing dish

Alu­minum foil

Fire mat

Heat gloves

Fire starters

Bak­ing dish larg­er than oth­er dish

Equipment

XL Toast­er Oven with 2 racks

Meat ther­mome­ters

Attempt Process

  • What’s need­ed is some­thing that will con­tin­u­ous­ly burn the wood chips
  • I decid­ed NOT to soak the wood chips (I quit soak­ing my wood chips for the meat smok­er to begin with) because I’ve found that the smoke from wet wood is dif­fer­ent from dry wood smoke, chang­ing the taste. Plus, wet wood cre­ates steam (This could be use­ful if you want it, but is eas­i­ly achieved with just a small bath of water or apple juice) and we’re try­ing to keep the wood light­ed in the oven.
  • I tried fire starters bro­ken up into small pieces under the wood chips, but those fiz­zled out real­ly quick­ly. Even try­ing to keep them smol­der­ing by blow­ing on them was­n’t enough to light the wood chips despite them being real­ly small (they were cock­tail smok­ing chips)
  • That’s when I real­ized that the foil-lined cook­ing dish I was using had no air flow what­so­ev­er to main­tain a flame. Even the BIC flex­i­ble lighter I was using kept going out while I was try­ing to light things
  • I tried light­ing sin­gle pieces of smok­er chips and then set­ting that into the pile, but that kept going out and it was sur­pris­ing­ly hard to light them on fire to begin with. They would bare­ly char even though the fire starter mate­ri­als burned strong­ly around them
  • Con­sid­ered whether or not hav­ing an open, uncon­trolled flame in the oven was a smart idea, any­ways. Came to the con­clu­sion that even if I did suc­ceed in light­ing wood chips, it is not a good idea, so then a con­trolled flame would be nec­es­sary
  • So, what’s need­ed: a con­tin­u­al burn source that would not be an open, uncon­trolled, flame… sounds quite a bit like: char­coal

With­out Char­coal

These were my many attempts to light the smok­er chips with­out char­coal and only fire starters. No suc­cess. Note the fire­proof mat and foil cov­ers

With Char­coal

Added the char­coal pieces and they’re suc­cess­ful­ly smol­der­ing. You can see how after 20 min­utes of try­ing, none of the smok­er chips were even charred from the firestarters

  • End­ed up plac­ing a few small char­coal pieces  on top of the fire starters and wood chips
  • Made sure to get them ashed over out­side so that the strong char­coal black smoke would not affect the meat so much
  • Placed alu­minum foil over­top the small bak­ing dish with holes large enough for con­vec­tion air flow to con­tin­u­al­ly feed the burn­ing char­coal, but then too-small holes just put out the flame instead. The foil also keeps any pos­si­ble arch­ing flames in check
  • Imme­di­ate­ly, smoke emanat­ed from the toast­er oven, so made sure to open win­dows enough to cre­ate a cross­wind. Smoke detec­tor did not go off! Sur­pris­ing­ly!
  • Meat DID have smoked taste, espe­cial­ly on the parts clos­er to the exte­ri­or of the meat, and because the low and slow smok­er cook was employed halfway through the bake, much of the inte­ri­or was quite soft, espe­cial­ly on the breast por­tion of the chick­en
  • Caveat: The house smelled heav­i­ly like a smok­er for sev­er­al days
  • Fig­ured out lat­er that only 1 of the 2 pieces of char­coal I used had stayed lit which explains why that side of the chick­en was more smoked than the oth­er

What the small dish looked like the next day after every­thing cooled. You can see how every­thing around the spent piece of char­coal burned and there­fore smoked. The right side had a piece of char­coal that did not suc­cess­ful­ly stay lit yet did man­age to char the sur­round­ing wood chips. Con­se­quent­ly, the left side of the chick­en had a far stronger smoke fla­vor than the right side

Directions

These direc­tions are not to cook it ful­ly like a smok­er, but rather just give it the fla­vor of smoke. You are wel­come to add the smoke in incre­ments, or as short or as long as you’d like. The key is to start the char­coal to light the wood chips, just like in a smok­er.

Dis­claimer: While I used a toast­er oven, I don’t know how or if using char­coal inside of one would cause dam­age

  • Start heat­ing up the meat in the Toast­er Oven with meat ther­mome­ters to mon­i­tor the temps
  • Use 2 racks, plac­ing the meat on the upper one
  • I used half a chick­en at 350F
  • After about 15 min­utes or so, pre­pare a small, thick bak­ing dish by dou­ble lin­ing it with foil (prefer­ably cast iron, or thick ceram­ic, not glass)
  • Go out­side, pre­pare a fire-safe sta­tion to start a fire (I use a fire­proof blanket/mat made for under­neath fire pits, had my heat gloves handy, some tongs are smart, and foil not only to cov­er, but to smoth­er in case it goes crazy)
  • Place some fire starters (pulled apart tum­ble weeds, bro­ken up starter cubes, or what­ev­er) on the bot­tom and place a few small pieces of char­coal over top.
  • Light up the fire starters
  • When the char­coal is burn­ing (when you blow on it you’ll see it is red) and has a nice white ash on top, throw your chips on top of the burn­ing char­coal
  • Poke some big holes into a foil sheet for smoke, fire con­trol, and air­flow to the coals. Too small and you’ll put out your fire
  • After around 30 min­utes or when the meat reach­es around 100F, low­er the tem­per­a­ture to 250F
  • Cov­er your smok­ing dish with the holey foil, put on your heat gloves, and place the dish on the bot­tom rack under the meat
  • OPEN YOUR WINDOWS if you haven’t, ide­al­ly cre­at­ing a cross­wind through the house to help the smoke you’re cre­at­ing and will cre­ate when you open the oven door
  • Mon­i­tor the cook for sev­er­al min­utes.
  • When it’s about 10–15 degrees from being done, remove the smok­ing dish, and increase the tem­per­a­ture of the oven again
  • SAFETY: Bring the smok­ing dish over to your fire sta­tion and cov­er it with a larg­er bak­ing dish to smoth­er the fire. I placed my small dish on an alu­minum roast­ing pan, and then the larg­er dish on top of that
  • Once the meat reach­es done­ness, let it rest before eat­ing
  • FIRE SAFETY: Make sure to allow every­thing in the dish to cool down for sev­er­al hours, and then dis­pose of prop­er­ly!! Do not just throw char­coal in the trash! You can cause a fire even hours lat­er!!!

ENJOY!