Rays Country Ham - 16 lb. - Whole Bone-in Country Ham - Blue Ridge Mountain Cured

Ray Goad ~ A Fast Food Pioneer: Ray and Geneva Goad opened their first restaurant, about ten years after Ray was discharged from the Navy at the end of WWII. Home cured Country Ham and Granny Goad’s Biscuits were featured on the menu. Ray became the innovator of the fast food breakfast, and the very first to serve Ham and Sausage Biscuits in a fast food restaurant.

Country Ham Traditions: Country Ham harks back to the way food was preserved on the family farms of Appalachia before there were electricity and refrigeration. The family tradition of butchering hogs in the late fall allowed for them to be preserved during the cold winter months with a natural curing process. Our Country Hams are drastically different from their more common cousin, the wet-cured ham, also known as city ham. The flavor of a Country Ham is more complex, with an almost addictive taste, aroma, and texture unlike any other.

Blue Ridge Mountain Cured: Today those Country Ham traditions are being kept alive in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Where once moonshiners and revenuers raced hot cars along Thunder Road, a few facilities owned and operated by the descendants of those early American pioneers are still making Country Hams. You can’t eat at a Ray’s Restaurant today, but you can enjoy Ray’s Country Ham in your own kitchen knowing that in every slice you will find that Taste from Another Place in Time.

Four Generations: Ray Jr. and Susan, the children of Geneva and Ray Goad, are perpetuating the legacy of Ray’s and the rich traditions of Country Ham for Ray Goad’s Grandchildren, which are now also active in the Family business. They assure that Ray’s Country Ham is cured in the same style featured for almost 50 years at the Ray’s Starlight Restaurant in Mount Airy, NC and, at dozens of Ray’s Kingburgers and Sweet Sue’s Restaurants across five of the Mid-Atlantic States.