UKH

Hi,

Have decided to cook the Christmas ham this year, rather than buying a pre-cooked one, but looking for a new recipe.

I've previously used a few I've found on the BBC food site, but give me your best recipes, please?

Used a Nigella one (iirc) once that involved boiling it in Coca Cola - nice, but messy, so probably not that one again

I normally boil it and then take it out and let it dry a little and paint it with a mix of honey, mustard and salt (heated a little to make it runny) then roast it. Removing it a few times to repaint. 

I've done similar with black treacle, mustard and cloves.

I like to boil it in cider, not as messy as cola. Can't go wrong with honey, treacle or soft brown sugar mized with some mustard as a glaze. Few cloves in the cider. Lovely stuff. 

Suggest soaking it for 24 hrs or so in cold water (change water every few hours) to get some of the salt out, then boil (in cola if you want) and then roast in mustard and honey.

If you have a slow cooker bung it in there, makes for a soft tender ham and is hassle free

+1 for cola (not diet) in the slow cooker. Not messy at all. Then optionally glaze with honey/mustard in the oven.

Yep - also works well with irn bru (dyes the ham orange) or apple juice

We've done Nigella's 'Fully Festive Ham' from the Feast book a few times. 

No coke involved. After desalting you boil it for hours  in cranberry juice and apple juice, with cinnamon sticks, onions and all spice berries in there too.

For a glaze you use 30! cloves to stud the ham, plus cranberry sauce, runny honey, some mustard powder and ground cinnamon. You heat all these up apart from the cloves then pour it over the ham and roast it.

In a pot with chopped onions, carrots, leek, coriander seeds, peppercorns, cinnamon bark and if you wish some fresh orange juice. Top the pot up with water to cover the ham. Poach gently until temperature reaches 55 degrees. Then turn the water off and let the joint cool in the liquid. Make sure the Internal temp hits 60 deg C. Remove skin with a knife and score the fat into diamonds, sticking a clove in each one.

For the glaze just freestyle some sweet and acid with wholegrain mustard e.g equal parts honey and black treacle (or a brown sugar like muscavado) juice and zest of an orange or two plus a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Oven at 200 deg C, pour over the glaze and then baste every 5 minutes until the glaze has thickened up and coats the meat in its glossy fineness (about 30 mins or so). I would recommend lining the roasting pan with tinfoil as burnt sugar is a bugger to clean up.

For desalting the gammon, I would just plonk it in a pot of water, bring it to the boil then take it straight out. This also gets rid of some impurities as evidenced by the scum you will see. I think modern curing methods make soaking overnight unnecessary.

+1 for the coke reference.

Boiling in ginger beer, then coating with ginger preserve and flash roasting has worked well for me in the past.

Thanks for the replies - think I'm going to try another Nigella one that doesn't involve any boiling, but just a slow roast.

SWMBO did ours last night - Coke, followed by some time in the oven smothered in honey.  The dog was given a little sample and was overwhelmed. As soon as it was cool enough it had to go in the fridge to stop the pleading for more!

Just to say, ahead of any arguments chez vouz as to how and for how long to roast the turkey, that Nigella's Feast timings work out perfectly so far as I have found:

2.25 kg / 5lb 1.5 hr
3.5 kg / 8lb 1.75 hr
4.5 kg / 10 lb 2 hr
5.5 kg / 12 lb 2.5 hr
6.75 kg / 15 lb 2.75 hr
7.5 kg / 17 lb 3 hr
9 kg / 20 lb 3.5 hr
11.5 kg / 25 lb 4.5 hr

Put the turkey in breast down at 200C for 30 minutes then turn the heat down to 180C and finally turn the turkey the right way up for the last 30 minutes. Afterwards leave it in its tin covered with something for a good hour while you use the oven for something else, and it seeps juices that you can use for a gravy.

We've only tested the middle third of this range, and have probably messed up in all sorts of ways on the detailed instructions, but it has always turned out just fine.

I couldn't bring myself to use Coca-Cola or similar, it just sounds so wrong.

Whatever you do, make sure it has loads of cloves.

Pressure cook (in water) with coriander, cardamom, mustard seeds and a bay leaf. Then honey+mustard and roast.

I think you're right, I've never soaked the gammon but I've only been doing this for the last 5 years or so. I used a mixture of pineapple juice and coke this time to boil, this worked great, but it did make the soup I made from the leftover juice pineapple flavored!

Have you tried it in the micro-waaavey thought?

The Coke one really works in a slow cooker, sit it on top of some slices of onion.