ham cooked in coke

oh me oh my, why did we not know about this before? it only came to my attention last weekend when talking about nigella recipes. i might sound slightly ridiculous but it came highly recommended, so being a lover of all things pig, we popped off to the supermarket and gave it a go!

this is what you will need:

for the ham
– 2 kilograms mild-cure gammon joint
– 1 onion (peeled and cut in half)
– 2 litres full fat coke

for the glaze
– 1 handful of cloves
– 1 heaped tablespoon black treacle
– 2 teaspoons english mustard powder (try dijon for a gluten-free option)
– 2 tablespoons demerara sugar

for three of us this looked too much so we halved everything and there were still left overs!

what you need to do:

we soaked our gammon, as we had a past experience where we thought it wasn’t that salty and then turned out to be saltier than salt itself. it wasn’t nice so to be safe we put into a pan covered in cold water and brought it up to boil. you can see all the salt in the water. tip into a colander over the sink, and give the pan a rinse out.

put the gammon back into the pan, with the skin side down if possible. add in your onion and pour the coke over the joint.

bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer and put the lid back on, but not fully leave a little gap. now leave this simmering for an hour per kilo plus another 15 minutes if the joint has come straight out of the fridge.

whilst this is cooking preheat your oven to 240°C/gas mark 9/450ºF.

once the ham has boiled for the required time, take it out of the pan and let it stand and cool for a while. this will make it easier to handle. you could also let it cool completely and then finish in the oven at a later stage.

remove the skin, leaving just a thin layer of fat. score this fat with a sharp knife, making large diamond shapes. then stud the diamonds with a clove.

mix the mustard and sugar together in a separate bowl.

carefully spread the treacle over the diamond studded skin, this is very very tricky and i ended up using the back of a spoon to do it, taking extra care around the cloves as so not to dislodge them. once covered in sticky treacle, gently pat the mustard and sugar mix onto the treacle covered fat.

transfer the joint into a foil lined roasting tin and pop into the oven for approximately 10 minutes or until the glaze is bubbling.

if you have let the ham cool completely, cook for 30-40 minutes, from room temperature, at 180°C/gas mark 4/350ºF, you can turn the heat up a little at the end if you think it needs a bit of a blast!

once done you should find that the gammon just falls apart beautifully and tastes absolutely divine! we served with a big dollop of cheesy mash for the ultimate meat and potato supper.

as nigella says no one who cooks it, cooks it just once! and that is indeed the case for us as we will be cooking this on boxing day this year, yum.

for some other christmas recipes check out some more nigella’s top tips here