The perfect... Wet-cured roast ham

Your cut-out-and-keep guide to the fundamentals of cooking

Igrew up with boiled ham like everyone else, but I was rummaging through an old book belonging to my grandfather a few years back, and I came across a cure that was low in salt and required roasting the ham on the bone. I did it with a rack of bacon first, and it blew my socks off. After that I did the cure and boiled the ham, and then did the cure on another ham and roasted it, and the difference between the boiled ham and the roasted ham was phenomenal. Roasting the ham at a low temperature over a long period develops the unique flavour, and gives incredible juiciness. With boiled meat, it is what it is, and, often in Ireland, we over-boil. And over-boiling gives you meat that is soggy and soft and has no nice texture. A roast dry-cured ham has texture and taste and, I think, it looks stunning, too. There are different kinds of cures for ham, but this recipe is for a wet cure. A dry cure is when you rub the outside of the ham, vacuum-seal it and let the salt cure the meat. With a wet cure, you sort of inject, for want of a better word, a solution of water and cure right into the bone of the joint. The curing gets all through the meat that way, and it makes a huge difference. In some Irish homes, a whole ham is something only eaten at Christmas. My feeling is that the ham gets sort of lost at Christmas, what with everything else on the plate; the turkey, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, maybe the white sauce. I was stunned to see statistics recently on how many people eat ham for St Patrick’s Day, so I think this is our chance to make the ham the showpiece of the meal on this occasion. I like the meat to speak for itself, and I find this ham very flavourful, so I personally wouldn’t glaze it. I think people like the aesthetic of the glossy, glazed ham as much as the flavour, so if you wanted to glaze it, my advice would be to make it less sweet than the usual sugar-heavy variety. If I was going to glaze this ham, I’d slather it in wholegrain mustard, maybe with a bit of cinnamon and a spoon of honey to turn it into a paste. One of the nicest things about the roast ham is that the flavour improves in the days after it has been cooked. You’ll eat every bit of it until it’s gone. Serves 8.

You will need:

4.75kg-5.7kg (10lbs 7oz-12lbs 9oz) joint of wet-cured ham

Method:

You can buy a joint of wet-cured ham from your butcher. Preheat the oven to 140°C, 275°F, Gas 1. Pour 250ml (8½fl oz) of cold water into a roasting tin that is large enough to hold the wet-cured ham. Put the ham on a rack so that it is above the water, and then cover the ham with a layer of greaseproof paper, followed by a layer of tinfoil. Roast the ham — covered — for three hours and then remove the greaseproof paper and tinfoil. Cook the ham for a further one hour, uncovered. If you’re glazing the ham, remove it from the oven when 30 minutes of the cooking time remain. Apply the glaze all over the ham, then return it to the oven, at the same temperature, for 30 minutes. Leave it to rest before serving. A