I love a roast ham, always unsmoked for me and weirdly now is a great time to buy them – just before Christmas and just after they tend to be really good value.
You can buy them pre-cooked, and on or off the bone. I tend to keep it simple, off the bone and to cook myself. It means that each one can be different. Yesterday I tried a new recipe and boy did it work!
Prep: 24hours Cook: 90min on the stove then 25min in the oven
Ingredients
1 good sized ham joint ~ 1.5kg
12 bletted medlar
1 lrg dspspn marmalade
1 dstspn maple syrup
olive oil
Prep
ham is salted to preserve it, so the first job it to get rid of some…
I swill the joint in cold water and soak for 24 to 36 hours before cooking, changing the water several times. I do this at room temperature. If you put it in the fridge it takes longer.
Method
- With the joint in a large pan and submerged in fresh water, break the ripe medlars into two or three pieces and add them to the pot. Bring to the simmer and cook for 90min to 2 hours. A minimum of 20min per 500g plus 30min.
- Pre-heat the oven to 200c (Fan)
- Remove the joint (keep the water). Cut away most of the fat and score what is left in a pattern – be creative, or not – up to you.
- Rescue the medlars from the water and press through a sieve – leave the skins and seeds behind. Take the pulp and mix it with the syrup, marmarlade and a ladle of the stock water.
- Add a good glug (about 40ml) of olive oil to the mix and give it a really good shake/blitz. Thw hot stock should melt the marmalade and the shake should create an emulsion (much like a salad dressing).
- With the joint in a roasting tin (fat side down) pour over the sauce. Cook in the oven for 25min basting every 5 min
Basting is really important. It thickens the coating with each basting and stops the outside of the joint from drying out. If you cook it hotter for less time you get the colour but not the thick sticky coating that adds a lot of flavour.
Oh and the water you have left from the cooking – use it for you’re veggies. It’s often too salty for soup or stock, but ideal for cooking potatoes so they take a little of the flavours.
The medlars aren’t essential. But I like the taste and cooking them with the ham gets the flavour through the meat. If you like you can replace these with an apple or just add apple sauce to the sauce – I like the contrasts between the marmalade, fruit and syrup.
More traditional recipes use things like cloves – I do that too sometimes, but I find the taste infusion can be quite uneven. Cooking a few cloves in the water works to even it out, but then I’d not use it for potatoes afterwards.