I realize I'm a day late in posting a ham recipe. After all yesterday was the big day and most of you are eating leftover ham right now, but as you know we operate on real time so what you see on this blog is generally what we've actually eaten the night before. Saying all of that, I would suggest you might want to tuck this recipe away for your next "hammy" occasion, because quite honestly this bourbon orange glazed ham is the best one I've ever cooked and I've certainly cooked quite a few.
What it proved to me is that the "price" of the ham doesn't necessary have anything to do with the end result. This particular 13 pounder was a Cook's Shank portion purchased at an insanely low price at Albertson's. Yes people, I shop the sale fliers and they had the best price by far for the same brand. Moist, tender, with a perfect texture and absolutely full of flavor, it was everything an Easter Ham is supposed to be.
I cut diamond shapes into the ham with a sharp knife, added some whole cloves for decoration, then put it on a rack in the roasting pan along with about a half inch of orange juice, covered it well with foil and roasted it at 325 for 2 hours. After two hours, we took the foil off and checked to temperature to find it was cooking a heck of a lot faster than I'd anticipated, so we commenced glazing it immediately.The glaze made good use of my homemade Kumquat/Tangelo marmalade along with some maple syrup, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and a hefty dose of bourbon. After glazing, while the ham wouldn't win a pretty contest -shank portions never do ...if you want pretty, ya' gotta' buy the butt portion - holy cow was it delicious. Download Bourbon Orange Glazed Ham
As for the rest of the menu, we kept it pretty simple with a Potato, Onion, Gruyere Gratin, a ragu of spring vegetables, and the requisite deviled eggs of course. Oh we also had some Angel Biscuits but I'll talk about those a little later in the week since we've still some in the refrigerator waiting to be baked.
While I'll share a picture of our table centerpiece, you won't be seeing one of our dessert. It was the only disappointment of the day - a Strawberry Tiramisu courtesy of a Foodnetwork star and honestly while it tasted good, it looked pretty bad. As I was serving it up I commented "Giada you're a bust". Course the big guy's quick response was "oh, yes she is!" Here I thought he enjoyed watching her simply because of her cooking skills. LOL
Laughing myself silly over the big guy's Giada comment...LOL!
I'm bookmarking this one for my next "hammie" occasion, which will probably be Christmas. I'm all hammed out right now. In fact, I just threw out the last couple of slices today. We've been eating it since last Sunday.
Posted by: Mags | 04/05/2010 at 05:00 PM
Mags - I'd say in about week we'll be all hammed out too, though we love the stuff. You kinda' started early didn't ya?
Posted by: June | 04/05/2010 at 05:43 PM