Ham in Ginger Ale with a Maple Glaze

I'm a little late posting this recipe but hey, a ham isn't just for Christmas - it's for all year round!

It's become a tradition for me to cook a large piece of gammon on Christmas Eve to keep us in ham over the festive period. Each year I try out a different recipe and this years version was cooked in ginger ale and glazed with maple syrup. 

Now I'd heard of this suggestion before but I've never found a recipe that I liked or that combined everything I wanted so I had to kind of wing it and make my own recipe up as I went along and this was the result. It turned out very well and was delicious. I knew that maple syrup is very runny so wouldn't be great for glazing on it's own so looked for what I could add to make it a bit more gloopy and sticky, especially as I like the ham to be slightly burnished in places. 

I thought this flavour combination worked really well and I was quite pleased with how it turned out, so below you will find the recipe for exactly how I did it. I don't soak my gammon first as I never find it that salty but if you want to feel free! 

You'll need to work out the boiling time based on the size of your piece of gammon, you need to allow around 30 mins per half a kg.

Ham in Ginger Ale with a Maple Glaze

Ingredients 

2kg gammon (smoked or unsmoked depending on your tastes)

2 litres of ginger ale

For the glaze;

100ml maple syrup

2 tbsp fresh grated ginger

1 heaped tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp brown sugar

Cloves for studding

Method

Put the gammon in a very large pan or stockpot and pour in the ginger ale. Make sure the gammon is covered with the liquid, if it isn't, top up the pan with some water. Bring to the boil and then turn down and simmer for the calculated time (30 mins per half kilo). Top up with boiling water during the cooking time if the level starts to go down. 

Discard the liquid and remove the ham from the stockpot. Leave to cool slightly.

Heat the oven to 200c and line a large roasting tray with tin foil. When the ham has cooled enough to handle, cut away most of the skin leaving just a thinnish layer of fat. Score the fat with a diamond patten and stud each point of the diamond with cloves and pop into the roasting tin.

In a jug or a bowl, mix the glaze ingredients together and pour the glaze all over the ham and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. Baste with the juices in the bottom of the pan a couple of times during roasting and once the time is up, remove from the oven and allow to rest before carving.

Depending on the size of gammon and pot you use you may need more liquid as the gammon needs to be completely covered.. I normally always make sure I have extra of whatever liquid I am using in case but you could just top up with water if you haven't got enough.

Also, if you've got a way bigger ham then you'll need to make more of the glaze, which can be easily doubled.