Every Sunday that my children are with me I am asked to make a roast dinner, now I don’t mind doing this seeing as I also adore a old fashioned roast, however rather than the usual beef or chicken I make a ham.
Now my ham is very much a tried and tested recipe that I have perfected over the course of many many years. I have experimented with different flavours and techniques and I finally landed on the best way to make a slow cooked ham.
Where to buy your ham.
I get my ham from my local Sainsbury’s but you can get your meat from any store or butcher if you’d like, I just prefer to grab mine whenever I am going around the shops doing the weekly. The size is completely up to you, as we often eat the rest of the ham throughout the week I get either two small ones or a medium ham due to the size of my slow cooker but really you can get any size you’d like.
I don’t really do much to the ham in the way of seasoning, seeing as the ham I tend to use is smoked it already has a flavour to it so I leave it as is, however when putting the ham into the slow cooker I will remove the string, I will add just under a pint of water into the cooker with the ham and within the water itself I had two table spoons of soft brown sugar and roughly three garlic cloves and I put the slow cooker on the slow setting for a long and delightfully smelling cook.
Roughly 4 hours after it’s been on slow I then put the slow cooker up to high and leave it to cook away until it’s time to prepare the vegetables and get the rest of the dinner cooking.
Roughly half an hour before I serve dinner I turn off the slow cooker and take out the ham and let it cool down, once it’s cooled I remove the rind and this is where I create my glaze.
My honey free glaze
I unfortunately cannot have honey, it makes my lips and tongue swell up so this is where I trailed different ways to creating a sweet glaze and crust for the ham, I get a table spoon full of soft brown sugar, a small amount of the liquid in the slow cooker from the ham and two of the garlic cloves that have been in the liquid as well, I mush it all up together until it creates this sort of paste that’ll go on top of the ham.
I then put them ham into the oven for 10 minutes so the sugars caramelise and create a sweet honey like crust on top.
Yum yum!
Once everything has been cooked to perfection I take the ham out, leave it to sit for a bit while I get organised and finally carve, due to it being in the slow cooker it will fall apart and be so tender but we kinda like it like that.
For an extra treat I also make my own gravy with the liquid left over from the slow cooker, just add some gravy granules into it and it makes this lovely homemade gravy.
This ham is what I am going to be making for christmas dinner and there is always plenty of left overs that can be enjoyed in sandwiches as well as pies or even into soups and can easily be frozen and eaten when you need too and its always something that I am looking forward to in the winter months.
Recipe
- 1 Gammon ham – size your choice
- 1 pint of water
- 2 tbs of soft brown sugar
- 3 garlic cloves
for the glaze
- 1 tbs of soft brown sugar
- 1 or 2 of the galic cloves from the ham liquid
- 1 tbs of the ham liquid to smooth into paste
Sarah
x
Leave a Reply