Cooking gammon.

[vonnyh]

I've never done it before. It weighs 2.2 kg. Any tips, or tried and tested methods. Do I have to boil it, then roast? To glaze or not to glaze? If so, what with?? Help please!

I boil mine - bring a large pan of cold water to the boil, add the gammon and bring back to boil. I then simmer it for 20mins/lb and then give it an extra 25mins at the end.

I use Nigella's Fully Festive Ham recipe. It is very simple! It looks quite lengthy and complicated but I have broken it down into manageable steps for you

Ingredients:
gammon joint
cranberry juice (1 litre)
apple juice (1 litre)
2 cinnamon sticks, halved
2 onions, halved but not peeled
1 tablespoon Allspice berries

For Cranberry Glaze:
approx 30 cloves to stud ham
4 tablespoons cranberry jelly or 6 tablespoons cranberry sauce
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 tablespoon english mustard powder
Half teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Put gammon in saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to boil and then immediately drain and rinse the gammon in a colander, to get rid of any excess saltiness.

1. Rinse saucepan and put gammon back in. Add all above ingredients (but not those for glaze). If not enough juice to cover ham, then add cold water to cover.

1. Bring pan to boil and cook on fast simmer for 20 mins per 450g plus 25 mins. Partially cover the ham with a lid if liquid is boiling away and the top of the ham is getting dry.

1. Once ham is cooked, removed from cooking liquid.

1. Once cooled to touchable temp (I leave mine to cool by open window), cut and peel the rind off the cooked ham and take off a thin layer of fat with it, so you are left with a thin coating of fat.

1. Preheat oven to GM7/220C

1. Score the now trimmed fat into a diamond pattern with a sharp knife and stud the points of each diamond with a clove.

1. Heat the remaining glaze ingredients in a pan until the everything is melted together to make a smooth-ish glaze.

1. Sit ham on a piece of foil in a roasting tin. Pour glaze over the clove-studded ham so that all of the scored fat is covered.

10. Put in oven and cook for 15 mins or until fat is coloured and burnished by the sugary glaze.

I've tried roasting and i've tried boiling and have come down on the side of boiling. Nigella's gammon sounds lovely (i was half tempted to try it) but boiling it makes it so juicy and it is so easy.

I find even with the roasting at the end the joint stays nice and juicy

However, we had boiled bacon collar joint on Sunday (bought by mistake by DH who thought it was a gammon joint......they are on same shelf apparently....duh!) and that was very juicy. Didn't bother roasting that one and finished the leftovers at lunch today.

Thanks everyone.

tulpe - I have battled through sainsbury's this morning to buy last minute ingrediants for your fully festive ham. thanks for the recipe, hope I can pull it off