Appetites: Making homemade lunch meat easy

Americans eat a lot of sandwiches, especially for lunch.

Sandwich eaters would do well to make their own lunch meat, says Amy Thielen, author of "The New Midwestern Table" and host of "Heartland Table" on the Food Network. Homemade cold cuts always trump those purchased at a store.

Here are four reasons to make your own lunch meat as well as a few recipes.

1) Lunch meat purchased at the grocery store is often the one thing that goes to waste before it is eaten.

2) Store-bought lunch meats often contain fillers, brine and extra sugar.

3) Homemade lunch meat can be really, really easy to make. Buy a turkey breast. Rub it with garlic, rosemary, lots of black pepper and salt. Use enough salt and it will keep all week. Just rub the meat liberally with salt, and then throw it into the oven when you are cooking something else. You'll have meat for sandwiches the next day. If you want to try something more exotic, try a recipe for Chinese lacquered pork and smoked ham.

4) If you begin with great meat, it will be delicious and much more satisfying than store-bought mystery meat.

Recipe: Mei's Char Siu or Chinese Lacquered Pork

• 3 pounds boneless pork butt (or loin), halved lengthwise

• 1/4 cup ketchup

• 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

• 1 tablespoon chili-garlic sauce (Toban Djan) or any favorite hot sauce

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine or sherry

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Lay the pork butt open like a book and cut it lengthwise, making two long pieces, and set it into a snugly fitting dish.

In a small bowl, combine the ketchup, ginger, chili-garlic sauce, sugar, wine, salt and pepper, and rub liberally over the pork, using all of the marinade. Marinate the meat for at least three hours and as long as two days.

Preheat an oven to 450 degrees.

Set the pork on a rack set into a baking sheet and brush with extra marinade. Roast at 450 degrees for 40 minutes, until the edges of the meat begin to darken. Then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and roast for another 20 minutes, or until the meat reaches 150 degrees on an internal thermometer, feels firm to the touch and has blackened edges.

Cool slightly before slicing thinly and serving on sliced bread with cucumber.

Recipe: Homemade Smoked Ham

Serves 6-8

Read through the recipe, which was adapted from "Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing" by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polycn, before you begin. The size of your roast dictates how many days you need to plan ahead. Even though there's a lot of foresight required here, the work is largely hands-off, and the pink, black-tipped pleasures of a freshly-smoked ham are more than worth it.

Don't forego the pink salt here (it can be purchased from your local butcher or online). It's necessary to preserve the meat, and will give it that characteristic hammy flavor. The classic curing salt (sodium nitrite) is easier to source than the celery-derived nitrite that "uncured" products use. If it's pink in color, it has been cured with nitrite, as it should be, because pink salt prevents botulism, and none of us want that.

The brine:

• 1 gallon (4 quarts) water

• 1 1/2 cups kosher salt

• 1 cup brown sugar

• 8 teaspoons pink salt

• 1 large bunch fresh sage

• 1 bunch fresh thyme

• 1/2 head of garlic, cut crosswise

Select a 4- to 5-pound pork leg roast or Boston butt. You may brine and smoke a larger roast — a small ham or leg, for instance — but in that case you will need to increase the brining time. The ratio is half a day or 12 hours per pound.

Combine half or 2 quarts of the water, the salt, sugar, pink salt, herbs and garlic in a sauce pot and bring to a simmer, whisking to dissolve the salt. Off heat, add the remaining half or two quarts of water, and then chill until cold to the touch.

Submerge pork roast in the brine, weighing it down to keep it completely under the surface of the water, and soak for two to three days — 12 hours per pound. Remove the ham, rinse it quickly under cool water and pat dry. Place it on a rack set on a sheet tray and refrigerate it, uncovered, for 12 to 24 hours.

Prepare a smoker — like a Big Green Egg — with coals and soaked-wood chips and make a fire that hovers around 200 to 225 degrees. Hot-smoke the ham until it reaches an internal temperature of 155 degrees (about 6 to 8 hours).

Remove the ham from the smoker. To serve, slice and serve cold, or reheat it in a low oven until warm in the center.

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