Small ham- do all the lovely recipes work?

[Owlfright]

I would love to try one of the great ham recipes on these threads, but I really only need to buy a small ham. We are with relatives for Christmas day and boxing day so I think a big ham would go to waste.

I've seen some small gammon 'joints' in the supermarket. They are off the bone and possibly not the best quality but I would like to give it a go anyway.

Any ideas as to how to make a little ham a bit special would be great.

I boil it with some stuff like bay leaf, peppercorns and mustard seeds. If I want it more special I then slice most of the fat off, score this in a cross cross, and paint with a glaze (lots of recipes, but honey and mustard works...) and pop in the oven. It doesn't matter what size as hard to over cook when boiling and just watch it in the oven so it just starts to colour.

I regularly do a small ham in the slow cooker, just rolled in brown sugar and mixed spice, pop into slow cooker on high. No need for liquid as cooker generates enough, I turn it once or twice to cook in the sugar on all sides and everyone loves it. It's usually one of the £5 tesco smoked 1/2 circle hams so while it's just a normal dinner for them price wise it tastes special, Christmasy :)

Thank you, both recepies sound great. How long to you cook it in slow cooker for?

Owlfright, I use a small slowcooker for this type of ham and cook on high for about 4-5 hours, although I have also done it on low heat all day, abut 8 hours or you could do it overnight :)

I've done the hairy bikers recipe with a small ham and it worked perfectly.

Actually come to think of it I've done ham in cola too. You might want to soak it though as sometimes the supermarket ones can be a bit salty.

I also recommend soaking the ham over night to get rid of the salty flavour. Cooked gammon will last for several days and makes lovely sarnies and any leftover bits can be frozen and put into soup, rolypoly, dumplings or a flan at a later date.

Leftover ham? You obviously don't live in our house

I found the ham-in-brown-sugar one vile. I threw it away.

The plain bacon joint I did was lovely though. Both were just smallish ones from a supermarket.

Has anyone tried the gammon in apple juice in the slow cooker? I've got a small unsmoked gammon from tesco but dp doesn't like the sound of it being cooked in cola.. But I don't want to do it plain as we have dp's sister Czech boyfriend coming xmas day and he's always complaining our foods to bland

(Not my food by the way, just food in the uk in general.. Dp sister went to his home town and couldn't eat a lot of it as more intense flavour)

Not done apple juice but the hairy bikers one is with orange juice and it was delicious.

I've done one in apple juice before, just in a pan though not the SC.

I think we boiled it for about 2hrs in the juice, a chopped in 4 onion, couple of bay leaves.

Then waited for it to cool a little before putting a glaze on it (marmalade, maple syrup, ground cloves, orange juice) then baked in oven for an hour, basting every 15 mins. Lovely.