If you browse through the pages of “The Peanut Patriot,” the official publication of the Georgia Peanut Producers Association, you will find pages of noteworthy information on one of the state’s biggest cash crops next to onions and peaches. Sometimes called “goobers,” peanut aficionado’s prefer to call the little nuggets, “Jewels of the South.”

But for my money, there is only one precious gem that holds the title of “Jewel of the South.” It doesn’t wear a rhinestone tiara and prance around in silly white pumps and a one-piece bathing suit; and it isn’t coated in chocolate and caramel and called a “turtle.”

No, the true “Jewel of the South” comes from a pig and is better known as country ham. That’s right, country ham. You don’t call it just ham. You call it by its proper and full name just as you would address a country gentleman -- country ham.

Country ham is not your water and coloring added, boneless, pressed and canned supermarket ham. Country ham is the real meal deal -- salty, tough and rugged. The ham that Lewis and Clark fried up in a cast iron skillet over an open fire while trudging west on their journey along the Oregon Trail some 200 years ago.

Country ham is humble and simple, and it hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years: just a whole leg of pork cured in salt and sugar, aged and then smoked.

Country ham is not however, a uniquely American food.

The Italians have been curing pork for thousands of years. They are famous for their “prosciutto,” a much fancier sounding name than country ham. But really, it’s nearly the same thing.

The Spanish place “Serrano” hams in metal baskets and put them on tapas bars all over the country. Patrons simply ask the bartender to shave off a few, paper-thin slices to nibble on with some brine-cured olives while sipping goblets of ruby red Rojas wine.

The French have always been devotees of hams. They eat it raw, stuff it into mousses and pates, swirl it into omelets and soufflés, and fry it in the national ham and cheese sandwich, the “Croque-Monsieur.”

But no other country can touch the taste of an American country ham -- bold and strikingly independent. Country ham literally sings “America the Beautiful” across the fruited plain. Country ham is every bit as precious to our culinary landscape as apple pie, hot dogs, hamburgers and Dr. Pepper.

While country ham is normally associated with the deep south, the actual region where country hams originate is limited to a narrow band that begins west in Missouri and makes a beeline east through Kentucky, the heart of country ham country, ending up in North Carolina. While country hams are found in pockets of Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina, one rarely finds a country ham north of Cincinnati, nor south of Memphis.

Country ham of course begins with a pig. Unfortunately, one pig yields but two hams, both of the back legs to be exact. Country ham is not made from the front legs, the lesser quality “picnic” hams one finds in the supermarket. Nor is country ham the “Boston butt” portion of the back leg. Country ham is the entire back leg, both the shank and the butt portions.

The rest of the pig is not wasted after the hams are taken off the pig. Scroll through your internet shopping list of country ham purveyors and you will find that nearly every single one sells scrumptious bacon and smoky pork sausage studded with sage. If you get lucky, your country ham store may sell pickled pieces of pork (usually jowls and feet).

After piggy has been sacrificed, the hams are ready for curing. A country ham is not trimmed in any way. The only finishing work that is done is to “scrape” the bristle hairs off the “rind” or skin of the leg of pork. That “rind” that surrounds the ham protects it during curing and smoking, and lying just underneath the rind is a layer of fat between the rind and meat. It’s that pork fat that gives the ham flavor and depth, so you don’t want to trim it off.

The brining mixture for country ham must include two elements -- salt and sugar. However, the amounts of both vary depending on who is curing the ham. Complicating the answer as to the definitive cure is the fact that printed recipes for curing country hams are very rare. “Hammers,” as they are sometimes called, high-tail it into the woods when they are asked to reveal the “secret” behind their ham cure. Many of today’s producer’s of country hams are small family operations that have been in business for generations and their cures are a closely guarded family secret.

Another reason country ham curing recipes are kept secret is the highly competitive nature of those who enter their country hams into competition. To a Southerner, an award-winning country ham is every bit as famous as the quarterback of the University of Tennessee football team.

The Blue Ribbon for the 2003 Grand Champion Country Ham at the Kentucky State Fair was awarded to Finchville Farms of Finchville, Kentucky. The prized Finchville country ham went on to command the record sum of $250,000 at the annual Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast and Auction. While the proceeds from the auction go to charity, the media attention paid to Finchville Farms will prove to be invaluable and insure that residents of Finchville, Kentucky will be employed in the country ham business for many more generations to come.

Aside from salt and sugar, (for a sweet ham brown sugar is sometimes used), some people add a few spices to their country ham brine mixture. Non-traditionalists may add nitrite or nitrate powder as a preservative, but it isn’t necessary and the practice is frowned upon by the old-timers. After about two months (the time varies depending on the good old boy curing the ham) the ham is washed and hung in the smokehouse. But the country ham isn’t smoked just yet; it is aged for a minimum of six months and up to 18 months before it is ready to be smoked.

Some of the best smokehouses are old tobacco drying sheds or barns. The barns are open on either end to allow air to breathe through and around the hams as they lazily sleep away, the distant scent of dried tobacco permeating ever so slightly into the ham. The high level of humidity during summers in the South keeps the hams moist and tender.

During the last couple of weeks of its life on the farm, a country ham is lightly smoked over hardwood like hickory or cherry wood.

Finally, at just the right moment – a time that only an experienced Hammer will know, the country ham is wrapped in butcher paper, put in a cloth bag and shipped off to market.

In the old days one had to go direct to the source, the smokehouse or the farmhouse, to purchase a country ham. But today, you don’t need to drive 2,000 miles to the Deep South to purchase a country ham. In addition to a number of internet sources, America’s favorite retailer also sells country ham.

Yes folks, you can buy an authentic, hand-made country ham at your local Wal-Mart Super center. You see, while Wal-Mart might not be the type of grocer that you would normally associate with a fussy food writer, it is in fact is a haven for hard-to-find ingredients known only to the southern cook. Owing to its roots in Arkansas, walk down the aisles of any Wal-Mart Super center grocery store and you will find up to twenty different brands of corn bread mix, too many barbecue sauces to count, innumerable rubs, spices and marinades, and frozen catfish, hush puppies, oysters and okra.

And it was in a Wal-Mart Super center that one day I came upon a sight I had only seen in one other grocery store in my life, the Winn-Dixie in Louisville, Kentucky. A beautiful specimen of country ham hanging from above swaddled in a cotton cloth sack like a sleeping baby. I snickered to myself, knowing that none of the other Wal-Mart shoppers that day had any idea what an expensive jewel was hanging over the frozen chicken breasts.

Country hams this precious must be weighed and priced by the Wal-Mart butcher. Yes, Wal-Mart does have real, live butchers. While the sign read $1.99 per pound, shoppers were under strict orders to request the butcher come and take down their chosen ham, weigh it and then price it.

My prize was 18 pounds of sweet and smoky country ham hand-made by the folks at “Burger’s Smokehouse” located out on highway 87 in California, Missouri. “Home of Hickory Smoked, Sugar Cured Meats Since 1952,” Burger’s adds a bit of brown sugar to their ham cure.

Burger’s was founded by Mr. Edwin Morris Burger, who had the distinction in July of 1956 of being the first man in the Nation to have received federal approval for his commercial ham plant. Prior to that, the country ham business was not federally regulated. Most country hams were made in small batches by local farmers and sold straight off the back of pickups or while hanging in a rural country store.

A whole country ham is both a thing of beauty and an object of disgust. It looks like the gnarled burl of an old myrtle wood tree, covered in green rot and often smelling of an un-scrubbed barbecue pit. And baking a whole leg of pork can be a daunting task for even the most educated city ham cook. Yet, as with any wonderful gift from Mother Nature’s pantry, one must use only time and love and the result will be a thing of pure pork beauty. Do your country ham right and it will turn into a joint of savory pink meat so fragrant and bursting with the taste of pork that you’ll jump up from the table and starts a hootin’ and hollerin’ so loud that the neighbors come a’runnin for fried country ham and fluffy biscuits.

It really is very simple to roast a whole country ham.

First we need to scrub Porky with a brush to wash off any green mold that has collected on the ham while it was aging. Don’t worry, any traces of mold that get missed won’t make you sick. You eat aged Stilton blue cheese from Shropshire studded with mold and it doesn’t make you sick now does it? Country ham is no different. A little bit of mold on a country ham is a mark of distinction in the ham world.

Second, we need to soak the ham in fresh water to leach out some of the curing salt that has concentrated in the ham over the course of the past 18 months or so. This can be done in advance of baking the ham, or during the cooking process itself. If you don’t like a lot of salty taste in your country ham, put the ham in the bathtub and let enough cold water run into the tub to cover the ham and let it soak in the water overnight.

I find it easier to just put it in a large roasting pan, and then pour in enough water to cover at least 4” around the bottom of the ham. The deeper the roasting pan the better. However, do not totally cover the ham in water. The water draws out salt while the ham cooks, but it also makes the outer rind or skin of the pig turn to rubber. I like to expose most of the outside of the ham to the heat of the oven so the skin dries up during roasting.

And when a country ham is baked, that rind turns into the crispiest, deliciously fatty pork skin you’ve ever eaten. You will never ever buy a plastic bag of those air-puffed “fried pork rinds” once you have eaten the real thing

Baking a whole country ham is basically done in order to raise the internal temperature of the ham. Since a country ham has been ‘cured’ using salt and sugar the meat has already basically been ‘cooked.’ In fact, before roasting a country ham I like to shave off a few paper-thin slices and eat the ham ‘raw.’

The only other essential piece of equipment is to use a meat thermometer. Stick it into the center part of the ham. The thermometer will tell you when the internal temperature of the ham reaches 160 , and that is when the country ham is done. For a 15-18 pound ham it will take about 6-7 hours in a 250° oven for the ham to reach the proper temperature.

Resist the temptation to increase the oven temperature. Low and slow is the mantra of the South and look at it as 6 hours of filling your home with the gentle, sweet and smoky fragrance of Sunday supper down on the farm.

Be careful not to let the water in the roasting pan boil while the ham cooks. We don’t want to boil the beast. The water acts to draw out salt and create steam in the oven to keep the ham moist and tender. Fat from the ham will drip into the water in the roasting pan. If that fat-filled water boils onto your oven heating element, you will could ignite a pork fat fire and be left with a dreadful mess to clean up.

Once the ham has reached 160°, remove the roasting pan from the oven and place it on a heavy rack. Stop it now, hands off the ham! Let the country ham cool in the cooking liquid until it is back down to room temperature. Why, I don’t know, but a country ham cook told me to do this!

Your first attack with a knife is to carve out some thick slices from the center of the ham. Don’t worry about fooling with meat cleavers or saws. You can carve out a huge slab of ham from the center and then slice it. That takes care of about 1/3 of your ham. Now you have another 2/3 of ham left to be cut, chopped, diced and sliced. Enough ham to feed the whole neighborhood. Don’t throw away those caveman ham bones. Keep the bones to throw in the bean pot.

There are endless stories about the origins of the term “redeye” gravy. I tend to believe the legend that relies on the ingredients in redeye gravy to define where the stuff came from -- grease from pork fat, salty pan drippings from fried country ham and strong, black coffee. Redeye gravy was so-named because it was a curative for those good’ol boys who had too many licks of moonshine the night before. A restorative breakfast of fried country ham, redeye gravy, stone-ground grits and biscuits with butter and honey would cure even city folk of any hangover caused by a night of binging on potato vodka martinis.

Of course, when you consume a lot of salty country ham, you need something sweet to balance out the flavors left on your tongue. People from the South definitely have a sweet tooth. Southerners gulp gallons of what is called “Sweet Tea” -- iced tea flavored with buckets of sugar. If you are a “Northerner” and not used to this liquid that tastes more of sugar syrup than tea, then order your tea “unsweetened.”

Likewise, Southerners prefer a sweet accent in their savory dishes. And when it comes to a Southern cook making a ham salad, you only need to open the fridge and pull out the bottle of Miracle Whip. Miracle Whip has just the right balance of eggy mayonnaise and sweet sugar to counteract out the salty bite of country ham.

Another Southern sweet is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola could be called the soft drink of the South because of its deep roots in Atlanta. In fact, some Southern cooks will tell you that Coca-Cola is a required ingredient in their country ham glaze. That’s right. Two glass bottles of Coca-Cola poured into the roasting dish along with two cups of water. As the ham bakes, the dark-brown elixir is spooned over the ham. Along with its suspected medicinal properties, the sweet taste of the South is the first flavor one senses when biting into a hefty chunk of country ham.

Walk into any “Meat and Three” in the South and you will find some type of greens proudly sitting in the buffet line. “Meat and Three’s” are the cafeteria-style eateries that dot the South. You take a plastic tray and proceed down the line calling out your choice of one meat and three side dishes from the plethora of dishes that lay ahead: crispy Southern fried chicken, squash casserole, pillow-like golden topped biscuits and cinnamon-apples. The choices are endless and it’s invariably hard to stay within the constraints of meat and three.

Country ham finds it way into many of the dishes -- whole baked ham cut into thick slices, fried slices of ham, ham and biscuits, hams bits in greens, ham bits in beans and ham bits in cream gravy. Country ham, ham, ham.

Greens have always been an important dish in the diet of the South and one of the staples of the soul-food kitchen. Mustard greens, kale, chard and collard greens all find their way into the soup pot. They are cheap to grow and they thrive in the hot, humid climate of the Deep South. With a few last bits of ham off the bone before it goes to the family dog, greens provide a main dish that is healthy and hearty.

Don’t be fooled by the sight of slow-cooked greens -- dark green and looking a little limpid, there is a hidden burst of flavor lurking in that murky steam-dish. Some say the best thing about greens is the “pot-licker” cooking liquid left in the stockpot. Drippings from greens, country ham and just a touch of sugar is quite good enough for sopping up with a decent loaf of country white bread.

Greens without country ham are like macaroni without cheese. Greens provide the main flavor and texture while the country ham provides that mysterious, salty, smoky essence that says “this is food with real soul.”

Country ham is not just the food of simple folk.

In the 1940’s, Mr. Waitus Worrell, became one of the founding Fathers of the Old Southern Wayco Ham Company of Goldsboro, North Carolina. Mr. Worrell sold hams to the speaker of the South Carolina legislature. In December of 1955, Mr. Worrell received this letter of recommendation from none other than First Lady Mamie Eisenhower: “The delicious ham which you sent the president and me brought so much pleasure to us during the Christmas season."

Mr. Smith Broadbent’s family has been making country hams in Cadiz, Kentucky the same way for generations. I think Mr. Broadbent best sums up what country ham is about: “My family has been making country ham for four generations, and the hams we make today are made with the same slow curing process that my great-grandfather used 90 years ago. Each Broadbent Ham is cured with my grandfather's secret blend of honey, sugar and salt, and then slow smoked and aged for 6 to 12 months.”