Every Christmas my family bakes a ham, and every Christmas I can’t eat it because it’s too damn salty. The chef doesn’t add salt or marinate it or anything. That’s just ham. It’s like it’s naturally salty. I can barely taste anything but salt when I eat a piece of ham. I love chicken, I love turkey, but I can’t do ham. Just regular, store-bought ham. Why so salty? 
Might want to try an uncured ham. (which would pretty much just be a pork roast)
Yeah, ham is almost always sold prepared as a cured ham. If you guessed that the curing process involves salt, you win a hock.
What if I hock my hock?
Then a follow up question: why is ham normally sold cured, and chicken/turkey is not? What does an uncured ham taste like? More like a pork chop?
Did you drop it in salt on the way home?
Soak the ham in water for a couple hours to pull out salt, makes it much better.
An uncured ham is a big fatty pork roast. It would just taste like pork.
Historically cured meats were used as a way of saving meat prior to refrigeration. Ham, prosciutto, pancetta, pepperoni, salami, smoked fish, salted pork, are all fairly rich foods and usually should be eaten in small portions. I would suggest next time get a good quality ham and eat it thinly sliced as a complement to other foods rather than as big ham steaks.
This is what I always do. I usually do it overnight and change the water a couple of times. Makes it much nicer to roast.
Yep. Ham is cured pork. Uncured ham is pork. No salt.
Pretty soon the anti-vaccination crowd will want us to stop curing pork.
Also, cured poulty totally exists. “Turkey ham,” which I see now and again, is precisely that.
At least I assume so. I’ve never bought any, because ham ham continues to exist.
Christmas at the rachelellorgram household: Salty Ham - YouTube
I’d skip anything called “Turkey ham” too - and totally go for some cured poultry in the form of confit.
Ham is salt-cured pork. Salt is in its definition.
Aren’t those big turkey legs they sell at fairs and outdoor events cured, or at least brined?
Ham really just refers to the cut of meat, that is the upper part of the back leg. My mother used to cook what she referred to as “fresh ham,” which was just roast pork using this cut. In the US today, pork hams are mostly cured rather than used fresh, possibly because this is the largest piece of meat on the pig. Other cuts, like loin, are used to make pork roasts. So “ham” has become synonymous with cured pork hams, even though technically it is not.
Beef is also sold cured as corned beef (which is pickled in a salt brine). Pastrami is cured beef that has subsequently been smoked. Brisket is the most popular cut for corned beef.
Woahwoahwoah… isn’t it: pork is meat from a pig. Ham is cured meat from the hind leg of a pig. Curing the shoulder would be something else, no?
I believe the term for cured pork shoulder would be “delicious.”
Capicola/Coppa.
The dead pig sorting hat goes: bacon>ham>>>pork
Capicolla and prosciutto and other Italian/Spanish types are side branches.