Ham in the slow cooker

Amanda65

Inspired by the board I recently purchased a cooker - pork on Tuesday and whole chicken yesterday were lovely.

I would like to have a go at cooking a ham this weekend to use in sarnies etc instead of buying plastic ham from the supermarket but have no idea where to start! I have bought and cooked gammon joints before in sauepan with boiling water - is this the same thing and if not where do you get your hams from, what sort of size do you buy, are they on the bone and roughly what should I expect to pay?

So many questions - sorry!

LJM

i buy the small joints as i know they will fit my slow cooker,i just pop it in cover with water and let it cook all day,keep checking the water level though will prob need a top up if in there for a long period

debtworrier

I did my Xmas ham in my slow cooker and it was fine. All 'roasted' hams have to be boiled for a while anyway before baking, and the slow-cooker is just substituting for the boiling time. If you want to do a baked ham, choose a joint with a nice layer of fat and the skin still on. Cook in the SC for a few hours (I think I gave mine about four, but it obviously depends on the size of the joint.) Then stick a fork in either side of the joint and lift it out using the forks as handles. Let it cool a little, but as soon as you can, peel off the skin, leaving the fat behind on the joint. With a knife, score the fat in a # pattern, and stick a clove in each little square. Mix together a dessert spoonful of honey, a teaspoonful of cinnamon or nutmeg and a teaspoonful of dried mustard powder and spread it generously over the joint (obviously a big joint will need more honey mixture than a small one). Bung the joint in a pre-heated oven (about gas mark 5) and give it about 30 minutes - a bit longer if it doesn't look all dark and crunchy - and in my case I let it cool completely before slicing, but you can serve it hot. Just leave it to cool/rest for about 15 mins in that case.

I find baking makes the cloves quite soft, so I just eat them, but you may want to fish them out beforehand if serving to Little Monsters (who will otherwise say "Yuk! My dinner's got a SPLINTER in it." and then spend the rest of the meal prodding everything as suspiciously as a Borgia at a buffet.) :rolleyes:

Paulie'sGirl

Hey,

As a very rough guide, my mum buys hams for about £7 which do 4 of us 2 meals. But that might be due to us loving ham so much we eat loads as we pass the fridge.

I get the feeling that gammon and ham joints are more expensive than beef, but that could just be where I live?

I've never cooked one on the bone cos they tend to be bigger (so much so I wonder if you might struggle to fit it in your SC?) but I'm sure someone better qualified will be along to help shortly!

(just looked at Mr T, £7 is 1.5kg worth of gammon, but generally it costs more if you buy a proper joint from a real butcher)

Hope that helps a little,

PG

Newgirl_2

Depending how much I want to spend or how much ham I need, I just buy a small gammon or bacon joint. I put it in the slow cooker with about an inch of water (you don't need to cover it) and turn it on. Mine took about 3-4 hours last week but it depends on size of course. You could put your cooker on low if you were leaving it on all day.

I didn't roast mine but you could if you wanted to.

Newgirl

su3

Bought a gammon joint tonight reduced to £2.49 from £8.50. Getting home the first thing I did was come to this site for help and lo and behold All the help I need.

Thank you all money savers This web site has been so useful for so many different things I wonder how I ever managed before.

THANKS EVERYONE

elona

SU

If you keep the stock and add dried (soaked overnight) marrowfat peas, onions, carrots and potato - you will have a huge pot of pea and ham soup as well - that costs very little.

If you do some searching around then you can get ham hocks for about £1.30 that have quite a bit of meat on them as well - they make great soup.