Hi guys!
Hope you're well.
So I am gonna hold your hand through preparing, making and
roasting the most amazing Christmas roast ham with black pepper marmalade -
which is a classic.
It's delicious.
So what we have here is a four, four and a
half kilo chunk of gammon.
This is already been salted but it's not cooked.
So what we do is we put it in a massive pot, let it sit in that water for maybe
an hour or two, get rid of that water.
That's not cooked, right, so we need to
poach that.
Put it on a heat with some root vegetables, carrots, celery - you can
put garlic in there if you want, a little bouquet garni or a mixture of herbs.
I've
got some orange zest in mine, peppercorns, and we'll slowly poach that for an hour
and a half.
Now I've done that so what we have here now is the skin attached to
the fat.
So I'll remove the string like that and then I need to just pull them
out like this.
Now what we're gonna try and do is keep as much as the fat on
this as possible.
We're now just gonna take a little pride
in removing the skin but also evening out the fat so it's basically about that
much all the way around.
So we've trimmed that skin off, now I want to use the
knife to lightly score the fat, and what that's gonna do is two things- it's gonna
give you this kind of texture that allows the oven to render the fat
quicker and go crispier, and once you've gone across the whole ham then simply
turn it across the other way and we'll go in at crisscross.
It's really easy,
it's really fun.
Don't spend hours and hours doing this, you've got way too much
to do at this time of year.
So now I'm gonna put this in the oven for about 20
minutes, just to get the fat going and sizzling, right.
So the oven is at 170
degrees Celsius, which is 325 Fahrenheit, and then I'll come back and
I'll show you what to do next.
Okay lovely people, so it's had 20 minutes and
in that 20 minutes it's just enough time to get a sizzle on.
We're gonna take a
little spoon out, you can angle the tray a little bit, so we've already got juices
coming out and we can start the basting process.
What we've done is just open up
this texture to receive flavour.
Now, you can see I'm dusting this quite
generously with black pepper and I like that kick.
Salt is already in this story
so we don't need to go anywhere near salt.
So on the marmalade,
to get that on the top and the heat will just start to naturally melt it anyway.
So as time goes on, it gets thicker and thicker until it can't run off anymore
and that is when you achieve perfection.
You can see now can't you, that by
creating those little criss crosses it's clinging on.
Black pepper and marmalade,
an amazing combination with that beautiful ham.
Look at that!
So this goes in the oven now for an hour and it's going to go
back in at 170 degrees Celsius, 325 Fahrenheit, and that temperature is a
good one because it's not too hot, it's not too cool, and over that hour it's
slowly gonna caramelise and kind of get tighter and thicker and stick to it more
and keep glazing it until it is a thing of beauty.
Right, back in the oven,
Okay, so this bad boy's been going for about half an hour, let's have a look.
Come on!
Look at that!
Let's get basting.
You get some of those
juices going with a spoon by all means.
What I've done is get a load of rosemary
and tie it up and create a rosemary brush.
Now you might think I'm mad but
I'm gonna use the rosemary brush to not only input flavour but also pick up
that lovely marmalade and put it back on the ham.
It smells amazing.
Oh my lord!
Back in you go, another 20 minutes to go.
So that beautiful ham has had a lot of love, care and attention.
It's been
poached and it's been roasted and glazed.
Here we are.
Oh my lord, look!
Look at that!
Guys, look at it!
Absolutely stunning!
Shining, salty, sweet gorgeousness.
So let's get this onto a board.
Now while
that is still warm, just put the last remnants of that amazing marmalade on
top.
As it cools down, it will kind of firm up.
I want you to go back to your
black pepper and, trust me, a beautiful dusting is going to make a massive
difference.
It's gonna be so good.
Guys look at that!
Come on!
That's what we
wanted - juicy, juicy inside and that gnarly caramelised golden outside.
And no matter how you serve that - whether it's with a big
old buffet, salads, cheese's, breads, or
with some mashed potato or fried egg or some bubble and squeak - that my friends
is one hell of a beautiful Christmas roast ham.
Enjoy.