Orange & Maple Glazed Gammon

Posted On 23 December 2022

OK so the 2022 Christmas Gammon, here we go. I often forget to take pictures, but having got back into doing this blog recently, I decided to make sure I took as many as possible. It ended up I had 3 million photos, so I then had to go through and cut them back – but better to do it that way than not have enough.

So here was my process:

1. Soak
2. Drain, Boil
3. Roast
4. Glaze
5. Glaze
6. Glaze
7. Glaze
8. Glaze

To elaborate somewhat… I first soaked the gammon for around 24hours in 2L of orange juice, topped up with water, with 3 oranges quartered and about half a pot of juniper berries (I actually added these after the photo). This was a big gammon (6.5Kg) and it only just fit in the pot, although I made a hell of a mess carrying it to the fridge.

At the point where I thought I should get cooking, I carried it back from the fridge (making more mess) and took out the oranges, juniper berries, and drained the liquid.

I then topped it back up with 2L of orange juice, and the rest water, until the gammon was covered. I then chopped up a load more oranges, and added them into the pot. I also poured in about 200ml of Maple Syrup.

I set the hob to max, brought it to the boil, then let it simmer for about 3 hours (possibly 4, I confess, I may have got distracted doing some work and not seen the time fly by).

I then, for ease, fished out all the oranges, and then got the gammon out onto a roasting tray. I sliced some oranges, and tied them around the top. In the past I’ve gone crazy and covered the whole thing in oranges, but y’know I don’t think it really made that much difference. And it was fiddly/tricky to do, and frankly I just wanted to enjoy cooking this.

So… with some oranges tied to the top it was ready to go in the oven:

That went in about gas mark 5. Whilst I waited, I used a ladle to get out the orange chunks from the main pan, and syphoned off a good saucepan’s worth of the liquid it had cooked in. I then poured in another 200ml of maple syrup, and set the hob to maximum warp.

Now where I said previously I took loads of photos, I realise, like a muppet… I forgot to take a photo of the sauce reduced. When it had reduced by about half – I removed the oranges, and sieved out a lot of the bits, and then just let it boil down to a thick sauce.

You can just see the bowl I was then going to use to baste the gammon with on the right:

So I basted on top of the oranges for the first hour, then took the oranges off:

That’s just had a baste, and it’s back in the oven. I was checking this around every 20 minutes, just making sure it was cooking nicely, but then re-basting when I thought it needed it.

It was starting to take shape! It was looking tasty. But more basting required… After a total of about 2 hours roasting, it looked like this:

You’ll notice on those pictures it looks a bit darker; that was unintentional – I didn’t realise the lights were off in the kitchen. After it sat for a few minutes, I moved it onto a carving tray (and turned the lights on):

I let it cool / rest, and then chopped it roughly in half (as we’re taking half to each set of parents):

I confess, I did slice off a cheeky little taster slice, and it was pretty much all I was hoping for. It’s difficult to tell truly though, it needs to rest in the fridge for 24 hours, then I’ll slice and put in a sandwich… either way, we won’t be short of gammon this year!!