Traditional Baked Ham. Christmas Recipe

Ingredients
5kg Double Smoked Ham
Clove sprigs

Glaze::
300g Orange Marmalade
100ml Orange Juice
100ml Ginger Beer
100ml Honey
3 Tbs Brown Sugar
Squeeze of lime juice.

Method::
Put all the glaze ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 40 minutes. Strain out the rinds and reserve. Allow to cool

Remove the skin from the ham leaving the fat intact. Cross hatch the fat through.
Insert a clove sprig into each diamond.
In one direction along the cut in the fat place the orange rind strips.

Glaze and sit for 10 minutes. Glaze again and bake in a 180 deg oven for 1 hour. Its done when you have burnt crispy bits at the edge. Tasty tasty morsels of joy.

Rest 1 to 2 hours and its all good.

Ham roast is as Christmas as it gets. Simple, but there are landmines at every turn to getting the great centre piece it should be. Obviously get the best ham you can afford. A budget ham works fine but a brined, double smoked is the real deal. About twice the price of a supermarket ham. The biggest pitfall is being rough removing the skin and dealing with the very fragile fat diamonds. The better the ham the more fragile the fat is. Cold from the fridge is a must during prepartion. Sharp knife and cold fat is your friends.

Carefully push the rind a little into the seam of fat to give it stability. This will form channels across the ham allowing the marinade paths to flow on. The fat on a quality ham is really soft and can easily be detached during preparation and cooking. Brushing is to be done very carefully if at all. Rather let the glaze fall off the end of the brush and flow down the paths. Long stem clove sprigs do help anchor the diamonds of fat to the meat. Near the bone use short sprigs.

Traditional Baked Ham w Orange Glaze
5 Star Christmas Recipe