MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WKRN) — Rice's Country Hams has been a Mt. Juliet institution for more than 90 years.

The icon of Lebanon Road was started by Edward Rice, Sr. in 1933.

"Highway 70 was the main path all the way to California, and that is how my grandfather built the business," explained Ginny Dabbs, owner of Rice's Country Hams. "He would take hams and hang them out front under the awning. As travelers would pass by, they would see the hams hanging up and the big ham on the side, and they would come in."

Rice, Sr. started out curing country hams just for his friends and family, but it quickly became a business, and he was curing 750 hams a year.

His son Edward Rice, Jr., grew up helping his dad cure the hams and took over the business in the early 1980s. He and his wife expanded the operation and made it what it is today. By the time he retired, Rice, Jr. was curing 4,000 hams a year.

Now Rice, Jr.'s daughter, Ginny Dabbs, and her husband Scott have carried on the tradition. Scott learned about the art of curing country hams from Rice, Sr. and Rice, Jr.

The process takes a whole year.

"The true secret to country ham is time," Scott Dabbs explained. "You have to have the seasons. You have to have the cold weather months, you have to have the gradual warming into the spring, and you have to have what we call a 'summer sweat'.  The summer sweat is where the flavor comes from. I take a ham, when it starts, it's around thirty pounds. When it cures, it's going to be around eighteen pounds."

There is also an art to preparing country ham for meals.

"As long as you cook it and prepare it right, it shouldn't have too much salt," Ginny Dabbs pointed out. "It should just be a fantastic flavor. We always make sure that people know how to cook it before they leave here, so they know what they're doing with it."

When people come into the store on Lebanon Road, they take a step back in time.

"It just brings people back to their childhood," Ginny Dabbs said. "We have people who literally came here as children when my grandfather was here, and they are now bringing their grandchildren in because they want them to have this experience. It's part of so many people's holiday tradition ... What we provide here that makes us so much different than everywhere else is that we do things the way they were done hundreds of years ago."

Ginny Dabbs told News 2 that country hams aren't the only things to get at Rice's.

"We've got homemade jams and that kind of thing," she said. "Mom evolved and brought that in."

Rice's Country Hams opens on October 1 and stays open through Christmas Eve. To learn more and to contact Rice's Country Hams, you can follow this link.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/on-tour-middle-tn/rices-country-hams/