Christmas Glazed Ham

It’s nearly upon us…..the christmas feast! The time to do your best work and impress the ‘rellies’.

We are not big meat eaters in this house but the rest o my family are so every year I glaze a ham. Hams that are purchased to be glazed and decorated are usually bought cooked. I ordered a whole ham one year, picked it up from the butcher on christmas eve and realised it wasn’t cooked! I had to find an enormous crayfish pot and cook it for a zillion hours and then glaze and bake it, it was a nightmare! But don’t worry the christmas hams at the supermarket are always cooked and you can eat them just as they are or glaze them, they taste much nicer glazed and look beautiful. I think it’s safe for me to say that once you eat a glazed ham you will never not glaze it again 🙂

I usually just buy half a leg of ham and I look for one with a longer bone at the end as it seems to look nicer rather than just a knobbly end. Last year I felt guilty glazing and eating our ham as I had a fair idea of how the pig was treated before it’s leg became the centrepiece of our christmas table. So this year I chose a Freedom Farms free farmed ham (I also use their eggs). It was quite a bit more expensive but I decided to either pay more or go without. Also I have cooked with free farmed ham and bacon before and it tastes much, much nicer.

This recipe is enough to glaze and decorate a half, cooked, leg of ham on the bone. If you have a full leg of ham you can double the glaze ingredients and you will need more toothpicks, another packet of cherries and another tin of pineapple. You can use cloves to decorate a ham for any occasion throughout the year and it looks amazing however even though it’s more time consuming and more expensive, at Christmas time I usually do the cherry and pineapple one as it’s more ‘christmassy’.

The Christmas Ham Tradition – The first known christmas hams were a Norse tradition. Boars were used as a sacrifice to Freyr to bring good luck in the new year. Freyr was an important Norse God, associated with virility, prosperity and one who could bestow peace and pleasure on mortals. The Boars were carried into Banquet halls on a gold or silver platter with an apple in their mouth to the sounds of trumpets and the songs of minstrels.

I also learnt something today…..Cloves are the unopened pink flower buds of the evergreen clove tree. The buds are picked by hand when they are pink and then dried until they turn brown in colour. Their English name is derived from the Latin word clavus, which means nail as they resemble tiny nails.

 

INGREDIENTS

A cooked half-leg ham on the bone

GLAZE
1/4 cup good-quality orange juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons marmalade
1/2 teaspoon curry powder

GARNISH
2-3 tablespoons whole cloves
or
x 80 toothpicks (approx)
2 cups glaced cherries  (x 2 150 gram packets)
3 cups pineapple chunks (x 2 440 gram tins)

 

Note

• The decoration ingredients may be a bit give or take as your half leg of ham may be a bit bigger or smaller than mine and you may cut a few more or a few less squares than I did. You can also halve the toothpicks, cherry and pineapple amounts if you would like to only place them in ‘every other’ scored square (like a checkerboard) instead of each square like I did. ALSO……(I go on don’t I) with pineapple chunks you only need to put one on each toothpick with a cherry but if you have bought pineapple pieces it will look better if you put two of them on as they are flatter.

 

WALKTHROUGH

So to begin, soak the toothpicks in a bowl of cold water as this helps them not to burn and go black in the oven.

Next,  mix the brown sugar, orange juice, marmalade, mustard and curry powder together in a small bowl and set it aside.

To get the garnish ready push a toothpick through a pineapple chunk or through two pineapple pieces and then slide a cherry on to it.  Make about 30 and you may need more later depending how many squares you want to garnish, so keep the remaining cherries and pineapple out.

There are four parts to your ham, the bone, the meat, then a layer of fat and that is covered in rind.

So to prepare it befor glazing place it onto a chopping board with the rind side up.

Then with a small, very sharp paring knife, cut around the side of your ham (where the rind covering the top half of your ham seems to end).

• Sometimes there is a definite line where the rind ends around the ham but in some places there isn’t so just pretend there is a line there and continue cutting until your cut meets up with the edge of the rind again.

Also cut some triangles at the bone end of the ham, before the knobbly bit starts.

Next use your knife to carefully separate the rind from the fat. Starting wherever you feel would be easiest and carefully peel the rind off, with extra caution being taken at the triangle end. Sometimes it gets snagged so just use your knife to help with that, or to remove any pieces of rind that are stuck onto the fat (the rind is not needed, so you can discard it).

Time to turn the oven on. Place a rack just a few rungs from the bottom, or so that the top of the ham will be around the centre of the oven and then turn the temperature to the oven to 160° fan-bake oven or 180° conventional oven, on bake.

Next, using the tip of your knife cut diagonal lines into and across the fat (see finished ham pics) around 1.5 – 2 cm (3/4 inch) apart and then across the other way, so to create diamond shapes. It’s a bit hard to get them perfect as the last line you cut seems to disappear, so I keep a finger in the middle of the last line I cut so I can use it as a rough guide for where to cut the next one.

Now place the ham in a large baking dish and give the glaze a quick stir. Using a spoon or preferably a pastry brush, liberally brush and dab or spoon half of the glaze all over the ham (never mind about the ham underneath you cannot see).

Also do the cut side to add some flavour there too.

The ham can now go into the oven for 15 minutes.

• They are so heavy so please be careful getting it in and out of the oven especially as there will be runny, hot glaze in the bottom of the tray.

After the 15 minutes is up remove the ham from the oven and again stir the glaze and again liberally brush and dab or spoon the remainder of the glaze all over it. The diamonds are more obvious now making it easier to garnish, so next place a clove into the centre of each square (I don’t use the ones with missing centres) or poke a cherry, pineapple toothpick into the centre of each square (or alternate squares if you chose to do that)and…..

……then pop it back into the oven for another 10 minutes.

After the 10 minutes is up, remove it from the oven and spoon any glaze from the bottom of the pan over the ham. If there is someone to help they could hold the ham in place whilst you tip the pan up and pour any excess glaze into a bowl (which is quicker than spooning it out).

Then return it to the oven for another ten minutes.

Again, after the 10 minutes is up, remove it from the oven and spoon any glaze from the bottom of the pan over the ham. Then for the final time place it back in the oven for a final 10 minutes which makes a total cooking time of 45 minutes.

If you used the cherries and pineapple they should be beautifully caramelised!!!

Sometimes I like to tie a big christmas ribbon around the bone end of mine or I buy a christmas decoration to place around the bone as that is the unattractive end.

Serve with cranberry sauce, apple sauce or fig jam or all three.

Storage – A cooked cured ham will last up to 2 weeks in the fridge. Keep it covered loosely (so it doesn’t sweat) with a clean, damp tea towel and change the towel every second day. If you think you won’t get through your ham or want to save some for another time, cut a chunk off and freeze it for up to three months (if sliced, one month).

• Just some ideas for leftover ham – Great fried for breakfasts in a bit of oil and butter. Nice in omelettes, macaroni cheese, quiches or frittatas, ham and corn fritters, toasties, you name it!