Please tell me how to cook a ham

[Koolandorthegang]

Right so I don’t eat ham or pork at all. Not a religious person thing, more that, in the words of Samuel L in Pulp Fiction I just don’t dig on swine. My OH does though. So I’ve bought him one for Christmas Day. It’s a small unsmoked one. About 700 g. How do I cook the shagging thing? Do I have to boil it first or can I just put it in the oven? I don’t have a slow cooker. Any of the recipes I’ve seen online demand boiling and baking with about 300 ingredients for basting and whatnot. Looking for the most straight-forward way of cooking it please. Anyone got any tips? Many thanks

Does it not say.anything on the packaging?

www.nigella.com/recipes/ham-in-coca-cola
Nigellas Ham in Coke

Got it from the butchers. He recommended faffing with it as described above

Go to M&S and buy one. I've never successfully cooked one from scratch!!

I boiled mine in plain water for an hour per kilo (gentle simmer). Take it out and cut the excess fat off. Score the remaining fat. Oven at 180 for half an hour to crisp up the outside. You can baste it in a glaze like honey mustard if you want to be fancy.

Also came to say do Nigella's ham in Coca-Cola. I always used to do that back when I ate meat, and it was always great.

We had one today, I slathered in black treacle, covered in foil and baked for about 4 hours. Was delicious! That was a 1.2 kg one so could do for less.

Thanks @Furble that’ll do pig

Did mine today as described by pp, I watched Jamie's cooking at Christmas thing the other day and did his method, very easy

Chuck in a pan, cover with water (add coke or ginger beer if you feel inclined). You can throw in an onion, peppercorns, bayleaf etc. at this point. Boil for time suggested on pack. Remove from liquid and allow to cool. Remove skin, leaving the fat. Score in diamond pattern. Rub in brown sugar, marmalade, honey or something of that ilk. If you want to get really fancy, push Clive's in at the point where the diamonds meet, or place pineapple rings on top with a glacé cherry in the holes.
Put in oven preheated to about 180C for half an hour until it looks glazed and golden on top.
Allow to cool.
Serve sliced with crusy bread, pickles, crunchy salad etc.

We had a 6kg whole leg from one of our pigs. Brined it for 12 days in curing salt (in a specially cleaned old paint tub!) then soaked in plain water for 2 days. Boiled for 5 hours, cooled for a day. Finally peeled the skin off, diamond patterned, brushed with honey, sugar and mustard mix and roasted for an hour. Simples.

Cloves, not Clive's

Ham...

Great ideas on here, I'd just add that you might want to soak it in cold water for a few hours to remove the salt. I'm looking forward to cooking mine tomorrow

@Oblahdeeoblahdoe do I have to soak it to remove the salt if it is unsalted ham? I feel this won’t end well for DP, off to plug in ye old stomach pump

@Koolandorthegang your ham is unsmoked, not unsalted. All ham is salted (that's part of why it's not pork any more). Soaking it removes salt and makes it much sweeter when you cook it. I try to do it for a day but even a couple of hours with s change of water makes a huge difference.

I'd do the boil then bake it approach as mentioned up thread.

@Bcnamechanger thank you for this

Ham /gammon is salted, that's the process, but to be honest, modern cures are pretty mild, so there's no real reason to soak it.
The cure used to be a preservation method, but now we all have fridges, it doesn't need to be so salt heavy.

Do you have a slow cooker? I always shove ham in it with a bit of water at the bottom, on low for 4-5 hours.

I never do any glazing shizzle. Bung in pan, bring to boil, chuck water, reboil (as furble said re timings) then cut off fat and chuck in oven for half hour ish.

😂 @ that’ll do pig

Precisely what I said when I’d taken mine out of the water & prepped it with cloves & honey after a little nibble to make sure it was ok