Peach Smoked Heritage Ham

The (mostly true) origin story of Zingerman’s

Paul Saginaw (Detroit) and Ari Weinzweig (Chicago) met while working at the same restaurant in the late 70s. They dreamed of opening a classic Jewish corner deli in their adopted home (Ann Arbor). When a century old 900 square foot building on a cobblestone street opened up it felt like fate. They opened the doors of Zingerman’s Delicatessen on March 15th, 1982. Think pressed tin ceiling and black and white tiled floor and you’ve got the picture. Five tables, some stools in the window and a menu with twenty five different sandwiches. It was a bohemian food lovers paradise, shopped and staffed by friends. It was—and remains—a bustling food oasis with an awesome mix of regulars, college students, tourists, high school students, parents, visitors, first timers, foodies, fans and adventurers. Please come visit.

We were in commerce before there was e-commerce

Historians speak of a time before the Internet made order of chaos. When cooking shows only aired on PBS. When the celebrity chef du jour was Paul Prudhomme. When no one—I mean no one—took a picture of their dinner. They called it “1992” and it was electric. 

It was the year we packed our first box. On a prep table in the basement of Zingerman’s Delicatessen. We haven’t slowed down since. Back then we took orders on carbonless paper in triplicate. We had a touch tone phone and a cassette answering machine we bought at Target for twenty bucks. There are probably adults reading this right now who have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s how long we’ve been shipping great food. 

The food is the thing

We swear the food we sell is the best tasting we can find. That’s 1,000% true. But there’s more to it. Like Alexander Hamilton we’re never satisfied. So we keep looking. We’re constantly comparing the food we sell to the new food we find. If we like the new stuff better, that’s what we want to sell. It means constantly tasting and tasting and tasting some more to make sure what was true yesterday is still true today. 

We don’t just pull food off a shelf and ship it

Take cheese. It’s a living food that keeps developing and deepening its flavors the longer it stays as a part of the wheel. That’s why we hand-cut your cheese to order directly from the wheel right before we ship it out the door. It’s more difficult than grabbing a pre-packaged wedge from a distributor. It takes lots of training. But the flavor is worth it. 

Zingerman’s Bakehouse—same story. They make all our breads and pastries by hand about a mile up the road. They don’t use any preservatives in their breads, they just let the crust be the natural protector of the crumb inside. We wrap it in paper by hand, pack it in boxes by hand, and, well, you get the idea. 

It’s all in Ann Arbor, Michigan

We started in this college town. And that’s where we’re staying. We don’t have locations around the country. We don’t have a call center in Iowa. Or India. We don’t fulfill with Amazon. We don’t outsource. We insource. 

We are real live human beings

No chatbots. No phone trees. No auto-email. Actually, there’s one, but it’s the most fun auto-email you’ll ever get, promise. When you call, you talk to us. When your order is packed it is packed by us. When we make a mistake, that’s us too. (And we’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.)

Our guarantee is rather crazy 

You know how some companies put up a bunch of rules and hurdles to overcome before they’ll give you a refund or ship out a new product? That’s not us. No rules. No returns. If you experience a problem with our food, service, shipping—or even if you simply don’t like how it tastes—let us know. We believe you. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. And you never have to return anything. 

Our horn, tooted by others

OK it always feels weird to share these kinds of things but they’re also kind of awesome. So here goes.

The reuben is killer.

Barack Obama, POTUS #44

Zingerman’s sandwiches are an 11 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Oprah, Midwesterner

My favorite store in the cosmos.

Jim Harrison, Writer, poet, trencherman

Arguably the best mail order gourmet food specialist in the nation.

Larry Olmstead, Forbes

Now that’s a sandwich!

Michael Ivins, Flaming Lips bassist, now retired from rock and roll

I ordered brownies for my daughter and her husband in Denver.  A coyote got into the box and ate most of the brownies. Not a very nice birthday surprise, but you came to my rescue. We came up with a new (secure) address and you replaced the brownies free of charge. 

Dave in Holt, Michigan

Zingerman’s—I think everyone around the country should love them.

Alejandra Ramos, Today Show

One of the country’s iconic food markets.

Kate Krader, Bloomberg

When it comes to the best place in America to buy cheese—OK, let’s all agree there’s absolutely no contest. It’s Zingerman’s.

Wall Street Journal

Zingerman’s is a legend.

USA Today

Thank you for having a company that ships great food overnight when children forget their parents’ 39th wedding anniversary and are in a bind.

Leah in Fredericksburg, Virginia

The hams are fully cooked, ready to eat. Though it’s not strictly necessary, I’d recommend heating it up in the oven before serving. It’ll add a couple of hours to the prep time, but it’ll also make a stunning, steaming centerpiece on your holiday table.

Store

Store your ham in the freezer until two days before you want to eat it, then put it in the fridge.

Heat

Take the ham out of the fridge and set it on the counter for one hour before heating. It’s fully cooked and ready to eat but if you’d like to serve it warm, here’s how.

1. Heat oven to 350°F.
2. Remove ham from packaging (note the weight on the label) and place on a rack in a shallow roasting pan on the oven’s roasting rack.
3. Cover the bottom of the pan with an inch of water. (Or stock, wine, cider, etc.)
4. Cover the pan and ham tightly with aluminum foil and bake for approximately 20 minutes per pound. You want the internal temperature of the ham to reach 110-120°F. Use a probe thermometer. The ham is already cooked, so it’s always been safe to eat. We’re just heating it.
5. Glazing optional. If you wish to apply a glaze—which is neither included nor required—remove the ham from the oven with about 30 minutes of cooking time left . Baste with your favorite glaze and return to the oven uncovered. Repeat basting several times in the remaining 30 minutes. You may need to add liquid to the bottom of the roasting pan as it evaporates.
6. Remove ham from the oven and let cool on the counter loosely covered with foil.

Serve

Let the the ham to rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Leftover ham will keep in your fridge for 1 week, or it can be frozen for up to 6 months.

We’ve partnered with Greg Gunthorp and Smoking Goose to offer an exclusive peach smoked ham, made only for Zingerman’s. The Duroc hams come from Greg’s farm. The team at Smoking Goose cures them with pepper, coriander, mustard seed, honey, bay leaf and a mead from Arvins Acres, a nearby meadery in Delphi, Indiana. Then they smoke the hams over peach wood.

It all begins at Gunthorp Farm in LaGrange, Indiana.

Greg Gunthorp is a fourth-generation pig farmer. Growing up, his family ran a mixed farm: they raised crops like wheat and soy, but also animals like pigs and chickens. As a kid, Greg’s favorite thing to do on the farm was to go out with his grandfather and feed the pigs. He grew up knowing he wanted to raise his own pigs. But he quickly learned that the economics were not in his favor. In 1998, the market price for his pasture raised pigs was five cents a pound—lower than the price during the depression. But Greg wasn’t willing to give up. So he made the decision to switch from selling pigs to selling pork.

That may not sound that revolutionary. But being able to sell pork meant that Greg needed to build his own abattoir (also known as a slaughterhouse). Thanks to regulations that work to keep us from living in another Upton Sinclair jungle, you can’t just open your own abattoir the same way you can just set up your own butchery, bakery, or candle stick-makery. The immense amount of red tape and paperwork involved in establishing and running an abattoir have essentially squeezed everyone out of the industry except the very biggest players. I asked Greg once how many pig and poultry farmers there are in the US that run their own abattoirs. He didn’t have to pause to think before he answered simply, “Three.”

Greg raises heritage breed Duroc pigs. Greg will tell you they’re not the easiest to raise—compared to today’s conventional pigs, it’s much tougher to get enough piglets from a sow in a year. But he likes them anyway because he loves the deep, rich flavor of the pork. The pigs spend their whole lives out on pasture, in the woods and fields of Greg’s farm. They root around for nuts, roots, and greenery. They’re never given hormones, subtherapeutic antibiotics, or any other growth promotants.

A hundred years ago, this all would have sounded pretty typical to any pig farmer in this country. But today, the vast majority of pigs raised in the US are raised indoors in confinement, standing above giant lagoons of their own waste. It’s more efficient that way, which is to say it costs less. Lower costs means higher profits for the giant companies that own most of the pigs in the US. But they save that money at the expense of animal and worker welfare—and flavor.

Not so with Greg’s pigs, though. They spend their lives doing what they please on the farm. When their time has come, they don’t have miles to travel on a crowded truck to get to the abattoir—instead, they stay on the same property where they’ve spent their whole life. It all adds up to make supremely flavorful pork.

Enter Smoking Goose.

Working in Indianapolis, Smoking Goose cures and smokes a slew of excellent meats, from familiar offerings like city hams to more adventurous choices like jowl bacon. They’re conscientious about all of their meat, and work only with farmers who meet their standards for ethics and sustainability—farmers, in short, like Greg.

This is a holiday ham par excellence.

The meat is sweet with a smooth smokiness. It’s complex enough to wow the most discerning palate at the table, yet approachable enough for the pickiest eaters to love it, too. The flavor is a knockout. It will linger with you long after you put down your fork.

Let’s start with the basics – what is a ham?

A ham is the meat of the leg – nearly always the back leg – of a pig, from its ankle to its rump. If you were to go to a butcher shop and ask for one that was raw, you’d be getting what’s called a fresh ham. You could cut it up and cook it like any other fresh meat. But in the US, we almost never buy fresh ham. Instead, practically all hams we buy are cured.

The method of curing has a huge impact on its flavor and how you eat it. There are two methods for curing ham: a wet cure, and a dry cure. (If those sound familiar, you’re not wrong! These two methods are both used for curing bacon.)

A “city” ham is wet cured and typically cooked before it’s sold.

A wet cured ham is cured with a saltwater brine. Traditionally, you’d soak the ham in the brine for a few days or weeks, until the salt had penetrated the ham fully. In industrial settings, that process is sped up by injecting the hams with brine. After curing, the hams may be smoked. Before they’re sold, they’re typically cooked.

These are the hams you’d buy at the supermarket and heat in the oven, sometimes with a glaze. The industry term for this style of ham is a city ham. City hams are juicy and sweet, and are your best bet for your special holiday meal. While they are ready to eat at room temperature, they’re particularly delicious heated in the oven.

A “country” ham is dry cured and aged for months or years before it’s sold.

A dry cured ham is also cured in salt, but instead of a brine, the raw ham is coated in dry salt, then aged for months or years. All that curing results in ham that tends to have a firmer texture and a saltier, deeper flavor than city ham.

Dry cured hams are common in the US across a band of Appalachia from Tennessee to Virginia, where they’re called country hams. American country hams are typically smoked, adding an additional level of savory flavor. Dry curing is also used for many of Europe’s most famous hams, including Spain’s jamón Ibérico, France’s jambon de Bayonne, and Italy’s prosciutto di Parma. These hams are generally not smoked (though in some corners of Europe you do find smoked hams, like northern Italy’s speck).

Thanks to the long curing time, dry cured hams are safe to eat without any cooking. For a tapas platter or charcuterie board, a dry cured ham makes for a stunning presentation and it’s so flavorful that even a few bites can go a long way.

There’s a growing demand for meat from animals raised in better conditions. What hasn’t necessarily grown is our knowledge about what exactly makes those conditions “better” and how we can find the information to make informed buying decisions. Here are my top recommendations for what to look for.

My number one question is: Do the animals have enough space?

Confined animals get sick more easily because diseases spread quickly when animals are kept close together, so the solution is to pump them full of antibiotics. Confined animals fight with each other, so the solution is to physically alter them by doing something like clipping their teeth or beaks and docking their tails – they’re still going to fight, but now they’ll do less damage to each other. I could go on – the problems of packing too many animals in too little space are many.

You could ask about antibiotics and physical alterations and a bunch of other details. Or, you could ask if the animals have enough space to live as they please – ideally, outdoors on pasture. In some parts of the U.S., that may not be possible year round – harsh Michigan winters, for instance, aren’t the best for many animals. But asking “are the animals raised on pasture?” is a great place to start a conversation.

One note of caution: watch out for answers that dodge the question, like “Our animals have access to pasture” (translation: they live indoors and likely never go outside).

What labels are useful?

When you can’t ask your farmer or retailer directly, what should you look for on the label? A lot of claims sound good. However, many labeling terms don’t actually mean much for animal welfare, including common ones like Farm Fresh, All Natural, Hormone Free for poultry and pork, Cage Free, and Free Range. Even Organic means less than you might assume: it requires animals get organic-certified feed and prohibits antibiotics, but specifies little about how the animals are raised.

A few certifications that do indicate high welfare standards are the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), Certified Humane, and Animal Welfare Approved (AWA). For an in-depth look into dozens of labeling terms, check out the Resources section of agreenerworld.org.

When you buy a bottle of wine what factors do you consider? I’ll bet one is what grapes it’s made from. We expect that a Cabernet Sauvignon will taste different from a Pinot Noir or a Chardonnay.

How about when you buy a pork chop? Do you consider the breed of the pig? No? You’re not alone. Over the last half a century, the meat industry has selectively bred more and more standardized animals, taking the breed completely out of the consumer’s mind. Pork is pork, right? Well, maybe. The vast majority of the pork that you buy at the grocery today is likely to be a breed developed over the last few decades, so it’s all going to be pretty similar.

The current trend is towards speed over quality.

While we used to breed animals to be disease resistant, or good tempered, or hardy, or delicious, the current trend is toward one very particular trait: the ability to convert feed into meat as quickly as possible.

First, it happened with chicken. In 1925 it took fifteen weeks to grow a chicken that weighed 2.2 pounds. By 1990 you could grow the same chicken in about four weeks. The biggest cost to raising a chicken is the feed so the quicker you can raise a chicken the less feed you have to give it and the less expensive it is to raise. With the new, faster growing chickens, the slow growing chickens that had pecked around farms were economically obsolete. Within a few decades, dozens of centuries-old heritage breed chickens were almost extinct. They were replaced by a few new breeds. Chicken meat became cheap and suddenly the dream of a chicken in every pot became a reality. Well, maybe a McNugget in every bucket.

But there were a lot of tradeoffs. These chickens lost their disease immunity. Wo they started getting daily antibiotics in their feed. They grew too big too quickly for their skeletons to keep up causing them to have trouble moving around without fracturing bones. So they were jam packed into tiny cages that barely allowed them to move. And while the meat was plentiful, it was bland.

After seeing the financial success they had with developing new chickens meat executives turned their attention to pork. Today, commercial pigs grow faster and bigger than ever. Also, like chickens, the vast majority of modern pigs bear little resemblance to the breeds that were rooting around on farms 75 years ago.

Back then, pigs were raised both for their meat and for their fat. Did you know lard was the number one cooking fat in America until World War II? Then, during the war, lard was so important as a grease used in making explosives that advertising campaigns implored housewives to switch to using “more healthful” vegetable fats like margarine so that the lard could all be used in the war effort. Long before the Mediterranean Diet craze put the nail in lard’s coffin it was on its way out. The idea that animal fats were bad caught on. Farmers started breeding pigs to be leaner. The meat industry noticed that lean muscle developed much more quickly than more flavorful fat and that sped the changes along. Within a few decades pork became so lean and that it ended up being advertised as a stand-in for chicken.

The good news is that there are a handful of farmers out there who are still raising heritage breed pigs.

These are the same breeds that could have been raised by their grandparents. Here are a few that you may find on the market today, including Zingerman’s. They do taste different!

Berkshire: one of the most common heritage pigs today, Berkshire pork is tender and incredibly flavorful—you might call it especially “porky.” It’s a popular choice with chefs.

Duroc: first developed in New England around 1800, Duroc pork is earthy, nutty, bold, yet clean and juicy.

Ibérico Pata Negra: these are the famous pigs that root in the forests of southern Spain and eat the acorns to become Ibérico de Bellota. The meat is usually cured. When fresh it’s unbelievably rich and savory, almost like a cross between beef and pork.

Red Wattle: originally from New Orleans, Red Wattle pork has incredibly complex, herbaceous, subtly sweet flavor. Its prized fat melts in your mouth.

Tamworth: first developed in Ireland, and known for being one of the best breeds for bacon. The pork has sweet, nutty notes.