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Boiled and baked Ham

This is a recipe for curing a leg of pork and poaching and baking it with a mustard glaze. Great for special occasions. The preparation of the ham is my own, adapted from various sources. The cooking of the ham is a Garry Rhodes recipe from "New British Classics", a BBC publication

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Boned and rolled leg of pork 3Kg is about the biggest I can handle, limited by the size of the poaching pan.

Curing mix per Kg of meat

  • 25 g Sea salt 2.5%
  • 15 g White sugar 1.5%
  • 2.4 g Cure #1 0.24%

Instructions
 

Curing the pork leg to make ham

  • Undo the rolled joint (cut the string), rub the dry cure over the meat, with the lions share on the meat and the rest on the skin.
  • Re-tie and vac pack. You will need to work quite quickly as the meat will start to ooze liquid straight away and this can make it difficult to vac pack.
  • Put in the bottom of the fridge for 10 days minimum, 2 weeks max. Give the joint a massage and turn it daily or thereabouts.
  • Remove from the vac bag and rinse away the goo.

Cooking the ham

  • Before cooking, I soak my ham for 24 hours in several changes of water, others don't. Soaking works for me, giving a less salty product.
  • Simmer the ham with a couple of onions, bay leaves, a few cloves and a few black pepper corns for 20 minutes per 450g. The ham should be poached rather than boiled, so a very gentle simmer is all that is needed.
  • Remove the ham from the stock and allow to cool for 10 - 15 minutes.
  • Cut away the skin but leave as much fat as you can. The strings can be removed at this stage as the ham should now have "set".
  • Score the fat into a diamond pattern and smear English mustard over the surface. Sprinkle with brown sugar and a drizzle of honey.
  • Bake in a preheated oven (190°C) for about 30 minutes or until the glaze slightly caramelises. Watch that it doesn't burn. The ham is already cooked you are just caramelising the glaze at this stage.
  • Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 15 - 20 minutes before slicing or leave to slice cold.

Notes

Note that the curing process here is basically the same as bacon - no surprises there, they are basically the same product.
I like to serve thick slices of ham with puy lentils cooked in some of the ham stock and mixed with diced carrot, celery and onion with maybe some boiled carrots.