Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, a pre-cooked ham in the pantry feeds more, brings more company to the house, brings curious neighbors to stop by, and adds fun holidays with friends dropping by with their own cooking creations to the holiday fun. Forget the glazes some of the brands include. We tried one once and it tasted too much of imitation maple flavor. Most of the brands I buy now don’t bother to include this powdered mix, but if you have found a way to jazz it up please send us a note! This recipe creates its own glaze from low heat olive oil and slow baking for up to 6 hours and frequent basting at least one time per hour,
The Secret is the Olive Oil Before Roasting!
Hams weren’t the holiday tradition until Chester and I were shipped off to boarding school, and Sunday dinner consisted frequently of a ham sort of substance that was baked in a red sort of plastic wrapper by our two earnest school chefs that at one time cooked for the Navy. It came out stiff and hard as shoe leather; but with the pineapple sauce it was palatable. I was never able to find where the ham like substance was made, but we always had to peel off the red plastic wrapping before we could eat a slice!
Once I got out of the house the first priority was to find a decent recipe for baked hams and fresh corn bread. We just didn’t eat things like that in the house– Mom was always dieting and there was only a half head of lettuce and some old tomatoes in the fridge. Here much of the fat is reduced into the sauce at the end of the day from all that slow baking, so once or twice a year or so this recipe won’t spike your cholesterol too much. Save the excess sauce, chill it and skim off the fat, as you will see in future editions you can make great things with this sauce– it is thick flavorful culinary gold!
We don’t blanch our hams before we cook them. We mentioned before that we were going to divulge in some of our best cooking secrets and this is one of them; the shank cut tends to come out of the oven moist and tender with a thick baked crust on the outer parts of the ham imparting a great juicy flavor inside. The rump cut brings out more meat and the traditional type of ham everyone is used to but it tends to dry out with slow roasting, even with liberal basting.
Secrets 101
This recipe partly comes from a Polish friend that immediately scolded me when I was trading recipes– she said you have to use a lot of chopped garlic. How much? Unbelievable, but at least one whole head, minced garlic. For this recipe a ten pound ham calles for at least three heads of garlic! We don’t any need salt for a cured, partially cooked ham, this has plenty of salt and roasting will leach some of it out into the gravy.
Secret # 2
Baste, baste and more basting. The sugar and orange marmalade mixture will create a rich sauce and frequent basting will give a dark delicious crust.
Secret # 3
Turn the ham on side to other side, then bottom to top every other hour so it will bake evenly.
Secret # 4
You will be able to open a restaurant with this one: the olive slathered liberally over every inch of the ham keeps the meat moist and flavorful throughout the baking
Ingredients:
10 lb or better precooked packaged ham- Preferably a shank cut.
dark brown or light brown sugar; at least 1/2 – 3/4 cup
orange marmalade
1/4 cup all spice, or cloves or both
three whole heads or more of garlic, coarsely chopped
What you need :
A high walled baking pan or # 6342 disposable aluminum pan– the ones I use are 10” x 12 1/2” that I buy at the dollar store around the corner for about $.50 each. They have high walls; about 4” high and you want this feature if you want the ham to have a nice crusty finish. You can also use and ironstone pan you want the top of the ham to just peek out at you and the iron stone will help cook the ham evenly. I use the disposable pan which I put on top of an aluminum cookie sheet so I can take the ham out without spilling everything all over the place.
Prep Couldn’t be Easier: 350 degrees for 6 hours or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees
Prehead oven at 350 degrees and keep it there for the duration of baking the ham. Open the packaged ham and rinse well with water, place in pan with all spice and brush olive oil over all parts of the ham, leaving a nice amount on the bottom of the pan to begin the sauce. Be liberal with your oil. Our experience is olive oil gives the ham the best flavor. Try making eggs or omelets with it and find a brand you like, you can’t go wrong with good quality olive oil. Place in oven covered with tin foil for one hour, then remove the foil, every hour switch the position of the ham so that it bakes faster and evenly. I used to start this by setting everything up right before Macy’s parade started (at 6 AM) and was always done by 1:00 PM so long as the ham was moved from one position to the other. Whew all that basting!
Serve with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, salad and seasonal cooked fresh veggies. At our holiday gatherings it is served alongside roast turkey with stuffing, or roast ducks with stuffing, or roast leg of lamb.
What sort of wine or beer to serve?
We try to have two or more lager type beers; one regular like Budweiser, or Coors, and one “artisanal” like Sam Adams. I started drinking Rolling Rock when I was in rural Pennsylvania and it is still one of my favorites. I serve also a chilled Italian red wine like an Abruzzi, and also a chilled red French “table wine” for the table. These are not château wines and cost about $9 per bottle. They average about three years old and that’s fine for us; it means the wine is fresh and full of flavor, low on tannins. This translates into tartness –– that wine buffs gush about– from sitting in bottles for years. Friends like to bring bottles of rose— Beringers makes a nice inexpensive rose for under $10. We also have chilled bottles of “Hard Lemonade” on hand.
What about Carlo Rossi Wines? Take Notes!!
If you don’t know Carlo Rossi by now, stop by the local wine outlet and buy one of these jugs for your next gathering. Jug wine never tasted so good unless you decide to make your own one year. Honestly, this is high quality wine, that wine buffs generally agree that this one of the best quality and inexpensive brands made in the U.S. – when they don’t have their noses in the air. It is a great value but don’t bother to re-bottle this wine, everyone will come back asking what brand it is!
For desert we will often have as many as 8 different pies (about how many that show up), I bring a chocolate swirl cheesecake along with the ham, a fresh pie, and some wine and my own corkscrew. It comes from Italy and frankly, others don’t seem to make the grade and mash up the cork!
Thekegger's Blog 