Virginia ham and it is typically salty in taste. It is a salt cured or sometimes nitrate cured for one to three months and it is smoked with hardwoods such as hickory or red oak. Depending on the amount of fat on the meat, it is aged for several months or from two to three years.
The preparation of country hams is a long one and it must be scrubbed first and then soaked for hours before it can be consumed. This is to remove the salt cure and molds sticking to it or else it will be too salty to eat. They can still be salty even thought they have been soaked properly. There are several ways of cooking and preparing a country ham. This would include slicing and pan-frying and then baked whole or simmering for several hours in many changes of water and then followed by baking it whole.
Country ham is served in restaurants as an entree and cut across with the bone left in for presentation purposes. It is also served in slices and then eaten together with sandwiches made of buttermilk biscuits or anything similar to it. A serving of butter, chicken gravy, or red eye gravy accompanies it and the bone is left out in this kind of serving. Red eye gravy always accompanies country ham and it is made by adding water or coffee to the drippings of the ham and simmering it until it is thickened to a sauce-like consistency.
Country ham is comparable to prosciutto although prosciutto is not smoked and it is considerably more moist than the country ham. Country ham steak is sliced thicker than the proscuitto even if it is to be used as a filling for a biscuit sandwich.
According to some cookbooks about Chinese cooking with American authors suggests that country ham can be substituted in recipes that call for Chinese ham products such as Jinhua ham as it is similar in flavour. Recipes that call for other kinds of ham can be substituted with it.