February 25, 2012 “Laughter is brightest where food is best.” ~ Irish Proverb
Dr Pepper Ham
Preheat your oven to 375*. For ease of clean-up liberally spray a large roasting pan with PAM or similar product.
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1 large (8-12 pound) fully cooked Ham
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1 cup pork bone marrow broth*
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½ can of Dr Pepper
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1 can of sliced pineapple, drained. Reserve the liquids.
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2 large onions cut into large bite size pieces
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4 cloves of garlic crushed slightly with the back of a knife and coarsely chopped
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1 tsp liquid smoke
You might want to soak the ham in cold water for a few hours to leach out some of the salt. My daughter says that you shouldn’t. According to her, if you don’t come away from the table feeling like you’re dying of thirst then you haven’t had a real ham dinner. Personally I think ham is too salty and the salt needs to be purged because it overwhelms my taste buds. Your call.
The night before you plan to cook your ham, wash it and trim off the crust along with any excess fat. I’m not sure what excess fat looks like. As Julia Child said, “Fat gives things flavor.” In my opinion, the more the merrier. This is not diet food, folks. Plunk your ham bone end down (that would be the flat end) in the pan and prepare the glaze.
Ham Glaze
In a small bowl, mix together ¼ cup of the liquid from the pineapple and :
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1 cup of brown sugar
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3 TBS of Grey Poupon mustard
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2 TBS French’s yellow mustard
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a few cranks of freshly ground pepper
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½ tsp garlic powder
Spoon the glaze over the ham, making sure to coat all the surfaces. Put the lid on your roaster if you are lucky enough to have such a thing or cover it tightly with tinfoil and stick in the refrigerator for 8 or more hours, basting with the glaze that has collected in the bottom of the pan occasionally.
Ideally you should let the ham come to room temperature before you bake it but unless you want to leave it out on the counter overnight (or all day if you are planning on ham for supper) that’s hard to accomplish. The best I have ever managed is a couple of hours. It does help retain the juiciness though.
A bone-in Ham should bake for 18-20 minutes per pound until a meat thermometer inserted next to but not touching the bone at its thickest point reads 160* with 20-30 minutes to rest after it comes out of the oven so plan accordingly. To figure out how long your ham should cook, the mathematical equation is: # of pounds times times 18 plus 20-30. So for a 10 pound ham figure on 200 minutes (divided by 60 minutes per hour equals 3 hours and 20 minutes) plus 20-30 minutes to rest. Thus, if you want to eat at noon your ham needs to be in the oven by 8:15 am. You better start the oven at 7:45 am. Set the temperature at 375*.
While the oven is pre-heating, baste the ham once more with the glaze and using toothpicks, pin the pineapple slices to the ham. Add some maraschino cherries pinned in the middle of the pineapple slices if you’re feeling fancy. You can also use cubed pineapple if you prefer that look. Baste the ham with the glaze again.
Pour the Dr Pepper, bone marrow broth, the rest of the pineapple juice, and the liquid smoke into the bottom of the pan. Give it a little stir. Add the onions and garlic evenly distributed around the ham. Cover tightly** with a lid or tinfoil and put it in the oven. Immediately reduce the temperature to 300* Ignore it for an hour. Then baste it with the liquid from the pan. Cover it back up and ignore it for another hour. Repeat the basting. Then just ignore it for another hour. Baste it again but do not cover it for the final 20 minutes while all that sugar caramelizes and it gets a pretty brown. Baste a couple of times during the final 20 minutes.
When You take the ham out of the oven remove it from the pan to the carving board and cover it with the foil while you make a gravy from the pan drippings and finish up the rest of the meal. It should rest at least 20 minutes so the juices stay in the meat instead of running out onto the cutting board when you carve it.
*If you don’t have the inclination to make pork bone marrow broth, you can use canned chicken broth. Since I always make Ham & Bean Soup at some point during the week after baking a ham, I start my bone marrow broth a couple of days ahead. Here’s the recipe:
Pork Bone Marrow Broth
1-2 pounds of pork neck bones
2 large onions (for color just wash them and don’t peel them)
3 unpeeled carrots
3 stalks of celery
3 good-sized cloves of garlic crushed slightly with the back of a knife
Put everything in a big stock pot, cover it with water, put a lid on it, and bring it to a full boil. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and let it simmer on the back of the stove for a couple of days, stirring occasionally. Add water as needed.
**It is important that you get a good seal between the pan and the tinfoil if you don’t have a lid. You don’t want any steam escaping the pan so that the ham stays nice and moist. Technically the method being used to cook the ham is braising rather than baking it although the ham isn’t browned first. Pre-heating the oven to 375* and reducing the heat immediately after putting the pan in the oven puts a sort of sear on the ham.
