Can confirm. My wife is from Kentucky, and I’ve had some as a result. They cut the mold off rather than scrub it, and it gets simmered in water before cooking to re-hydrate it and get some of the salt out of it. Some people make redeye gravy with the drippings of cooking it after it’s been re-hydrated.
I’m not super fond of it, but it is better than most canned hams.
Anecdote about one of the canned hams of old: In the 80’s I was working at a grocery store, and there was a refrigerated canned ham at the top of the shelf, near the fluorescent light. The label had lost all red due to this exposure, and was just a washed out bluish ghost of its former self. It got turned around, because the other side looked just fine, it still wasn’t near its expiration date, and it didn’t seem to be flying off the shelf anyway.
They were cured like any other ham, but packed in plenty of fat and aspic. I remember them from when I was a child, and think they were all one contiguous cut, and not a conglomeration of several.
When I was a student in Moscow 1989–90, I bought a Danish canned ham at a hard currency store and treated my Russian friends to ham and eggs. There was a lot of fat and gel, but my classmates were delighted: “We haven’t had ham like this in ages!”
When I was living in England in the '70s, actually developed a taste for these:
Mystery meat dyed red and packed in a savory gravy, served on baps (soft buns). I have fond memories of buying these from a street vendor in the rain and devouring them on the way home from a pub crawl after midnight.
Revolting if you’re not consuming them through an alcohol haze.
When I was working on the radio, I bought a can of Danish meatballs in gravy at a kiosk on my way to the station. I was really hungry but couldn’t eat the damned things, they were so gross. So I gave them to the studio cat.
I just remember as a kid (born 1972) that ham just wasn’t a very common meal in our family even at holidays, until the mid-1980s. I suspect that’s because until then, canned hams were the only easy to get option, and something like today’s regular ham was something you probably had to get from a smokehouse/barbecue place, butcher shop, or some other specialty place like maybe Honeybaked hams.
Sometime in the 1980s, ham suddenly became a thing, and we typically have had ham for Christmas most years since. That makes me think that there must have been some kind of change in the availability of ham that took place around that time.
This discussion got me curious about how canned hams are made. This seems relevant to the discussion (Bolding mine.) :
A canned ham consists of pieces of ham that have been brine cured, pressed or molded, vacuum-sealed in a can, and then fully cooked. Many canned hams have gelatin added, which helps to absorb the natural juices of the ham. The ham is steam cooked in the can. It is ready to eat or it can be heated before serving. Canned hams are not as flavorful and have a different texture than other hams but they offer convenience. They are available in two basic forms, shelf stable and refrigerated. Shelf stable canned hams can be stored for 2 to 5 years at room temperature but should not be stored at high temperatures (above 122° F). Refrigerated canned hams can be stored, unopened, in the refrigerator for 6 to 9 months.
The development of new refrigerated containers in the 70’s ties in with what others are saying and I remember, whole hams becoming more widely available around the 80’s.
### 20th Century- Reefer Containers Arise
Several other notable innovations, like the portable air cooling unit and mobile refrigeration specifically for fruit, emerged in the early 1900s. Refrigerated shipping of meat and fruit became more and more common through the middle of the century. By the 1960s, insulated containers on ships were fully developed. In the 1970s, the first refrigerated containers with integrated cooling units were also produced and used.
Hotdogs are normally tinned (or ‘canned’) in the UK. Recently, they’ve been in glass jars, but that tends to be a German/Belgian thing, so the likes of Aldi/Lidl has brought them over, and they’re better quality in the jars. Also the tinned ones have been shrinking a lot in recent years, you’ll open one and find something close to mini hot dogs.
You often can buy fresh refrigerated ones too, but I don’t because I’ll forget about them and throw them in the bin, tinned ones will be dragged out at 2am after a beer.
I’m interested though as to what someone from the US will typically buy if they want hot dogs. Assuming it’s not the rotating ones from shops/gas stations.
At a supermarket, they’re sold as “fresh” in packages of eight or ten. We have a good variety, and they can be beef, pork, or bird, skin-on or skinless.
We don’t usually go out if we want a hot dog, except in Michigan where “Coney Island” is a thing. I’ve gone to hot dog restaurants in Chicagoland, but luckily there are enough other things on the menu that you’re not forced to eat a hotdog at a sit-down restaurant. Fast food restaurants (Sonic, etc.) often have hot dogs. They’re mostly just street food.
Adding: they are sold refrigerated in shrink wrapped plastic. I think the idea of canned or jarred hot dogs would not be popular in the US (excepting the much ridiculed Vienna Sausage).
Growing up, I didn’t know ham came any other way than in a big can. (Other than sandwich slices and ham steaks, of course.) Dad would score the ham diagonally one way, then score it again the other way. He’d insert a whole clove at each intersection, then cover it with orange marmalade and bake it in the oven. Served with potatoes au gratin ('all-rotten potatoes) out of a box. I think the hams dad bought were Hormel.
I’ve been buying spiral-cut, bone-in ham for… Gosh, I don’t know how long. Dad died in the '90s; and the last time I had a canned ham, he made it. I frequently have the desire to buy a canned ham and make it like dad did, just for the ‘comfort food’ aspect. I haven’t gotten round to looking for one though.
You can also get them by the pound at the deli counter in some stores. However, those are usually more ‘European’ in style, bland & pale but skin-on and quite snappy. It’s not always easy to find all beef snappy dogs like you’d get at a restaurant.
I can’t remember the last time I made a hot dog at home. The commitment to eight is just too much and there are countless options in the neighborhood, all of them good or better. We have a robust hot dog culture in Chicago.
Tuesday we had Seattle Mariner dogs. They were good, but I think I like Hebrew National better. (I’ll get the giant packages of H-N dogs from Chef’Store – formerly Cash & Carry – and parcel them out and freeze them.)
