Recipe for Cherry Coke Ham

Hi

Hope you are all well.  Missing you all so much and cannot wait until we are all back together again.  Myself and the rest of the Mann Clan are doing ok.  We have done a lot of work in the garden and I have ordered more garden lights, much to the despair of my lot, as I now have an obsession with garden lights.  I will post some pictures once the last lot have been put up.  I say last lot, that's not strictly true.

When my late brother's daughter had her 21st birthday party, he made his famous Cherry Coke Ham.  It was so delicious, that as soon as he was carving slices they were being gobbled up by whoever could get to the front of the queue.

I thought I would share the recipe with you.

Ingredients:

2kg mild cure gammon

4 x 2 litre bottles of cherry Coke, you may have some left over

1 onion

3-4 tablespoons cherry jam

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/2 tea spoon red wine vinegar

Small amount of peppercorns (around 20-30)

Method:

Put the ham, onion, and peppercorns in an appropriate sized pan, add the coke until the ham is completely submerged, bring it to the boil, then simmer for about 2 1/2 hours.  You may find that you need to top the coke up from time to time.

Near the end of this time, put the oven on at 180 degrees.

Once the ham is cooked, transfer it to a roasting dish and leave it to cool for a while.

Remove the top layer of the skin, leaving the fat on the ham and score the fat.

For the glaze:

In a saucepan mix the jam, red wine vinegar and paprika and bring to the boil.  Turn the heat down slightly and cook this until it is very thick and syrupy. 

You will find that the juices may have run from the ham.  Discard any juices from the roasting dish.

Cover the fat of the ham with the glaze.

Roast in the oven for 40 minutes.

Your ham is now ready to serve either hot as part of a roast dinner, or you can have it with chips, pickles, and crusty bread.  It's just as nice cold.

 I experimented recently and swapped the black cherry jam with marmalade, the red wine vinegar with white wine vinegar and cooked the ham initially in lemonade (not diet).

It was really nice, very similar to the first recipe but I think the cherry coke was a slightly better taste.

Enjoy.

Author:  Trace Mann