Why is roast pork white and ham is pink when it comes from the same animal?
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Sodium nitrite in the curing process keeps the meat pink instead of oxidizing to brown. Bacon’s pink/red for the same reason. This stuff is suspected of causing cancer and is only cosmetic, leaving it out doesn’t affect the flavour just the colour.
https://amp.theguardian.com/food/2022/jul/08/nitrites-in-bacon-scientists-mps-call-for-uk-ban-cancer-fears
Ham is smoked and cured, pork is cooked. Chemical changes in the meat occur when cooking which turn the pink flesh white, similar to chicken.
Ham isn’t pink. They add nitrates to preserve it and give it the pink color.
Real high quality ham is grey.
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Same reason a corned beef/silver side is red but a beef roast when cooked well done is brown. The curing process with salt and sugar and other ingredients like nitrites that ham and bacon go through compared to roast pork, cause the ham to change colour
Ham (especially low quality) is usually dyed because people are used to see it pink and are turned off by the greyish tones it normally takes. A nitrites free ham from the butcher’s has a grey tone to it.
So most of the answers say that the color comes from curing and nitrates. But how does a huge leg of ham get pink all the way through? Im not an expert so I don’t understand how the curing process can penetrate all the way through from the surface and evenly have the same color as the inside.
Turkey legs in the deli section are prepared similarly to ham and other deli meats and is also pink.
Keep in mind pork and ham are red meat, whatever the optical colour: https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-pork-white-meat
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