a whole pig, deb?

I have been cooking store bought ham for 50 years. I thought all ham needed to be cooked.

To eat

And I'm glad lol

"normal" ham you would be used to. It looks like a big hunk of pork roast. I had a hog slaughtered when I used to buy freezer beef etc. I wanted to mix having so much beef for one person and decided to get a hog. Best pork I ever had. My suggestion would be to roast low and slow like a turkey. You can marinate it ahead of time if you wish. I didn't and just kept a nice coating of black pepper on it. Pork loves black pepper. I think it would be an interesting cut of meat to do over an open pit as long as you had good control of your heat. I have seen old recipes over the years that talk about "basting" with pickle juice, sweet as I recall, to get a nice crisp on the surface. I think it's something you can have a wide latitude for experimentation. I've also seen a recommendation to use ground mustard mixed with black pepper. I don't remember any ratio to the mix. I wouldn't go real heavy but probably 1 mustard to 5 or 6 black pepper probably would be alright.

Seasoning on the surface of course means keeping after it as it cooks and what seasoning to use sort of depends on how you like your pork fat to taste if you enjoy a bit of gristle like I do. Honestly debm55 you can't go wrong as long as you give it the low and slow approach. A meat thermometer will help you more than appearance.

SugarDALE ham is fully cooked, and I suspect that if SugarDELL is different, it is too. A fresh ham does not have the typical pink look of a cured ham, and it will not be as firm. It would need to be cooked to an internal temperature of 145-150°, like any fresh pork. What you describe is warming to meat to 120-130°

Or if you are my mother, pork must be cooked until it turns to leather, or reaches the temperature of the surface of the sun. — your choice.

done, liver like leather pork and chicken way over cooked.. Thank you for taking the time and energy to look that up for me.
I thank you my friend. And I guess I owe my neighbor an apology for turning down some of his ham.

But the best ham I ever prepared was uncooked, bone-in, fat still on it. So juicy.