Easter - fresh, skin on picnic ham

Brining or curing?

When I do a porchetta roast with the same cut, I leave the skin on, but slice it into a diamond pattern spaced less than an inch.  This is an extended cook, so the skin gets a chance to crisp up, but it is very tough.

If you are glazing the ham or doing any type of crust (giner bread crumbs, or crackle glaze for example), it won't stick to the skin, and the skin may an unwelcome surprise when it hits the mouth.

If you want an easy to slice ham (or roast, I don't know which you are doing), then removing it is probably advised.

If you are curing it with a sweet cure (versus simply bringing), you may want to inject the cure along the bone to speed the curing.

Until it is cured, you should keep it refrigerated.
And after it is cured, since you are not hanging it to dry, I would keep it refrigerated too.

Believe it or not though, you technically could hang it to dry unwrapped at room temperature, after curing actually.  But no real need to do so, unless you wanted to age it and intensify flavor. This is NOT typically done with city hams.  I'm just saying, a gent could if he wanted to.

In parts of Italy, dry cured prosciuttos (and this is not a dry cure, I know) are buried in salt and weighted at room temperature, to cure.  Actually, ambient temperature is more accurate.

City hams used to be cured at room temperature as well, on their way to market.

And in parts of France today it is still de rigueur to keep a crock of sweet pickle brine (which is a wet/quick cure, not merely a 'brine') on the counter, in the kitchen at room temperature, and to throw a joint of meat in it whenever you take one out to cook.  These may be left for weeks at room temperature.  The brine becomes its own strain of goodness, and is merely added to, and occasionally boiled (and skimmed) as needed.

Regardless of our tendency to panic in the US, a good many (most) cured foods do not require refrigeration. Gravlax is an ambient temperature cure as well, originally.  Fish and salt.  Nothing more. And nothing more needed, either, unless you are adding flavors like herbs and aquavit.

But try telling that to your wife.

Once you handle it (slicing your home made bacon), yes, you ought to refrigerate.  But unmolested, uncut, you could leave that bacon sitting on the counter as long as you wanted.  it would merely dry (and intensify) in flavor.

Amazing but true.

You could, but no one does, usually for practical reasons.

Prosciuttos are usually much more dry to begin with, having had much more of their water removed duringg the cure as compared to city hams, which have had water ADDED during their cure.

So prosciuttos dry more slowly, which is good.  The city ham would  shrink rapidly on the exterior, while remaining highly moist on the interior. 

A wet cured city ham, with higher moisture content, would dry quickly on the exterior, and unevenly throughout.  Consider a dry-cured country ham.  It is also pressed under salt (it is, actually, not at all different from prosciutto, except it just has low-grade sugars to counter the harsh salt and is typically smoked), and so being dry, dries further more steadily.

I would not advocate drying a city ham for this reason.

@SenecaTheYounger‌ That's some great info there brother.
@Stacyk‌ Brined meat will cook faster than unbrined meat. If you give the temp you cooking at I can get you real close to cook time.
@DNW brother I'm getting the feeling that you should be sending me advice and that I should pay very close attention to it. You give great advice and it's always true and accurate. You bring a lot of knowledge to this forum. I can tell by your responses that you are among the elite cooks on this forum. I hope others have noticed as well and heed your advice.