Best of British

Eight generations of curing meat – including a recipe served on the Titanic

A meat-curing firm that has kept it in the family

COLIN WOODALL started helping out on his father’s pig farm in the tiny village of Waberthwaite in the Lake District when he was just 10 years old, and at 16 he left school to work there. ‘As a family member there were no privileges – you started at the bottom and worked your way up,’ he recalls.

But in the 1980s, he began to work in his uncle’s business, making air-dried ham using pigs from his father’s farm, adapting a traditional cured ham recipe that had been in his family for eight generations. Its popularity slowly grew and, though his father’s pig farm has since shut down, Woodall expanded his meat-curing business in 2003.

Today, Woodall’s employs a team of 10, and produces salami and other charcuterie along with the original Cumbrian air-dried ham.

One of his ancestors, Hannah Woodall, invented the recipe in the early 19th century – it was popular among locals and was served on the Titanic. Woodall follows a similar process.

First he takes the back leg of the pig, then he debones and trims it. Next he rubs the meat with an old dry-curing recipe comprising salt, sugar and nitrate, which draws the moisture from the meat and helps prevent bacteria.

His other hams are made in much the same way, but with different curing ingredients – the Black Combe, for example, is rubbed with a spice mix containing juniper, coriander and bay leaves, while the Royale is submerged in a pickling brine flavoured with ale and molasses. Both are cold-smoked (where the cured meat is exposed to smoke at a low temperature so it takes on a smoky flavour without being cooked by heat).

Next the hams are hung on metal racks in the drying room, which can hold 3,000 of them at once, and they are left for six months to dry. ‘They look like bats, hanging in the dark,’ says Woodall.

To ensure the flavour matures in the correct way, Woodall often adjusts the humidity and temperature of the room. He also smells the ham during this time to check its progress. ‘If it’s maturing well it produces a wonderful sweet smell,’ he says. Finally, the hams are taken down from the hooks, the rind is removed and the meat is trimmed, sliced and packaged.

‘What we do wasn’t always fashionable,’ says Woodall. ‘But slowly people came on board. It’s been a long and interesting road.’

Interview by Sophie Foster. Photographs by Joseph Brotherton Above Colin Woodall in his drying room. Right Smoked pancetta air drying. Far right Woodall’s has expanded into salami and other charcuterie.