If you’ve been following me on Instagram this week, most of my recipes for Christmas have been featured there. But I’m posting the longer ones here on the blog today. Hopefully you have done your shopping already in anticipation of what you need to prep your Christmas meals! I find I’m always in the grocery store on Christmas Eve getting something last minute… but fortunately preparing a Gammon for Christmas is a relatively easy thing to do these days, and the ingredients should be easy enough to get.

So many products are partially pre-cooked and often all you have to do is glaze the top, and warm it up before serving. I’m so on board with these hams because it gives me more time to spend on my Turkey cooking. But if you do find you want to spend some time on your Gammon, this too is an easy and most rewarding recipe.

Here’s what goes in:
A gammon/ham of your choice
1-2L of ginger ale
1 cup of white wine
A cinnamon stick
Half an orange, sliced
4 cloves
2 star anise
1 onion, quartered
1 tablespoon of fennel seeds
Water, if needed
1 pineapple, sliced
Maple syrup, for glazing

How to do it:
Place your gammon in a pot with all of the ingredients, ensuring that it is fully immersed in the liquid. The amount that you need will depend on the size of both your gammon, and the pot
that you are going to cook it in. Add water if you need to. Cook this following the instructions
on the packaging of your selected meat. If you are cooking a raw ham from scratch, you’re
probably looking at 3 hours. It will be less for a pre-cooked gammon.

Once done, set the gammon aside to cool. Remove the rind with a sharp knife, brush it with
maple syrup and rub a bit of coarse salt over it. This can be grilled in the oven to make delicious, crispy crackling.

Finely slice your pineapple, brush the slices with maple syrup and fry these in a griddle pan to
serve with the sliced gammon. Add a few tablespoons of the “gammon water” to any juices
left in the pan, and then drizzle this over your platter of sliced gammon and pineapple for extra flavour.

Happy Christmas cooking!!