recipes++

Fully Festive Ham

Serves 8-10

Ingredients

  • 3.5 kg ham
  • 2 litres cranberry juice
  • 2 litres apple juice
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 2 onions, halved, but not peeled
  • 1 tbsp allspice berries (1 tsp allspice if not available)

For the cranberry glaze:

  • Approx 30 cloves to stud the ham
  • 4 tbsp cranberry jelly or 6 tbsp cranberry sauce
  • 1 tbsp runny honey
  • 1 tbsp English mustard powder
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

  1. Preparing the ham:
  2. Put the ham into a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and immediately drain and rinse the gammon. Alternatively, soak the ham overnight in cold water.
  3. Rinse the saucepan, put the gammon back in and add all the ingredients except the glaze ingredients. If the ham is not covered by the liquid, top it up with water.
  4. Bring the pan to a boil and cook the gammon at a fast simmer for 3½ - 4 hours. Cover the pan with a lid if the liquid is boiling away and the top of the ham is getting dry.
  5. Once the ham is cooked, remove it from the juice, saving the juice for later, and sit it on a board. If you need to, you can now let it cool until it is ready to be glazed.
  6. Glazing the ham:
  7. Pre-heat the oven to 220ºC.
  8. When the ham is bearable to touch, cut and peel the rind off leaving a thin layer of white fat. Score the timed fat into a diamond pattern with a sharp knife and stud the points of each diamond with a clove.
  9. Heat the glaze ingredients in a saucepan until the jelly or sauce melts into the honey and mustard to make a smooth glaze and becomes syrupy enough so that it will not run off the ham when applied. If you are using sauce, you will have to cook it for longer so that they berries burst. Note: cranberry jelly tends to have a higher gloss.
  10. Sit the ham on a piece of foil in a roasting tin; pour the glaze over the clove-studded ham so that all the fat is covered. Put into the oven and cook for 15 minutes until the fat is coloured and burnished by the sugary glaze. If you have let the ham completely cool, the ham will need a lot longer – about 40 minutes at 180ºC.
  11. Serve immediately.
  12. If you wish to make a sauce for the ham, reduce the excess liquid from the boiling stage with a little flour to thicken.
  13. Cooking cabbage in the left-over liquid also makes a tasty accompaniment.