Mutton dressed as ham

One of my customers was talking to me recently about an old NZ tradition of 'mutton ham'. This is taking a leg of mutton (a sheep that is more than 2 years old) and treating it as you would a ham. On looking into this there are a pile of recipes on the internet for this, so I decided to have a go.

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton
75gm brown sugar
4 tbs golden syrup
1 tbs ground ginger
1 tbs ground cloves
1 tbs allspice
1 tbs white pepper
300gm PVD salt

It starts as a more or less dry rub on the mutton, but as you turn it and re-apply the brine every 12 hours it becomes a wet brine and more and more liquid is drawn from the meat.

After 6 days wash the meat down, rub all over with malt vinegar and leave to hang for 24 hours to dry.

It can then be either smoked or boiled the next day. I'm off to Australia for the rest of the week, so mine will hand for a week and I'll smoke it next Sunday and boil it after that. It should last a month in the fridge.