Ham Time

There are times when nostalgia come back and leads to great things.  When I was kid and visiting my grandparents in Cardiff, Wales.  My grandmother would cook a roast for Sunday dinner and occasionally she would make a gammon ham.  I don't remember anything about the Sunday dinner ham but I have fond memories of the leftover ham in sandwiches made with white bread, butter and mustard.  Oh sweet decadence.  It has taken years for my mother, my husband and I to come up with something that approximates this lovely ham.  Gammon ham is quite expensive here and quite difficult to get, I have to order well in advance at my local butchers but there is now a Scottish butchers that keeps it on hand.  


I had asked my dear husband to make gammon ham (also known as green ham) for a Sunday dinner, so he ordered a 6-7 lb gammon ham to be picked up on Saturday.  At 4:05pm, dear husband announced that he had neglected to pick up the ham before the 4pm closing time and besides the fact that the butchers isn't open on Sunday, it needs to soak overnight to remove a bunch of the salt, so unless he found another ham we would be ham-less for Sunday dinner.  This would have been okay, but I had been thinking about this ham all week and really wanted some leftover ham for sandwiches.  Luckily there is a butchers about 45 minutes away that usually carry gammon ham, there was one draw back.....

... it is 20 lbs of ham.

They only had bone it (which is fine) and they only had a 20 lb gammon ham.  The nice thing about a huge bone-in ham is that it was surprisingly inexpensive.  $1.99/lb, so our 20 lb ham only cost us $40 which is less then I bet the 6-7 lb boneless ham will cost us (since we ordered it and we still have to pick it up.)

This ham was huge, and luckily we had a bunch of people coming over to help us eat 20lbs of ham. Plus, my mum will happily take some leftovers.

Gammon ham is a 2 day process, that is because a gammon ham is a raw salt cured ham  and it needs to sit overnight in cool water to remove some of the salt.  So that is an 8 hours plus step.  To help the salt removal go a little faster you can do a bunch of water changes, which is only really necessary when you are soaking a large ham.  The next step is to simmer the ham to cook the ham, then you remove it from the poaching liquid (which in our case was water and apple juice, but it has also been done in Dr. Pepper or Coke which impart a sweeter flavour.) The last and final step before devouring is to remove the skin leaving a thin layer of fat then roasting the ham for 20 minutes to crisp up the fat and cook any of the flavours you apply to the fat.

Gammon Ham 

-You'll need a gammon ham, which you will have to get from a butcher since groceries stores (at least in my part of Canada) do not carry them.

-In a large enough pot to fit the ham, place the ham and fill with water and let sit for 8-24 hours, larger joints of ham will require a few changes of water and 24 hours of soaking.

-The ham will require simmering for 20 minutes per lb, so our 20 lb ham should have taken 6 2/3 hours, but ended up taking 5 1/2 hours for the internal temperature to reach 160 degrees. We used a mixture of 1/2 apple juice and 1/2 water.

-Once the ham has reached 160 degrees, you remove it from the pot and place in a roasting pan and remove the skin leaving a thin layer of fat, you can cut the fat into a diamond pattern and pierce the flesh with cloves, but I find that a bit to clovey.  So did a rub of brown sugar, dry mustard powder and mace.  

-Roast it for 20 minutes in a oven pre-heated to 450.

-Slice and Serve.  Delicious.