December 26, 2017 / In food , pork / Tagged as: ham, turkey, potatoes, allspice

Christmas Ham, Turkey and Roast Potatoes

Total Cook Time

4 hours

Ingredients

  • HAM
  • 1 ham, 3kg
  • 1 stick of celery
  • 1 tsp allspice
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns
  • 1 tsp cloves
  • ROASTIES
  • potatoes
  • goose fat
  • TURKEY
  • 1 turkey, 8kg

Ham

  1. HAM: the night before. Put the ham in a pot of water so its almost covered. Bring to a gentle boil (~ 1 hour). Then tip ALL of the water out. We want to discard impurities.
  2. Refill the pot with cold water. Add the allspice, 1 celery stick halved and the black peppercorns.
  3. Bring to a simmer again. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Drain and set aside to cool.
  4. The next day… consider removing some of the crackling/fat on the outside off the ham. Naturally it depends how much is there to start with.
  5. Add brown sugar over the outside of the ham. This creates a glaze affect once cooked.
  6. OPTIONAL. Stud it with some cloves.
  7. Place ham in oven for 30-60 minutes at 180 Degrees C. Or until cooked.

Turkey

  1. TURKEY: the night before, take out of the fridge and leave somewhere cool. A garage or back kitchen are ideal (out of reach of hounds… particularly Spaniels….).
  2. Stuff the turkey. Cover in tinfoil and place in oven (200C) for 3 hours.
  3. As it finishes cooking, check how browned the skin is; usually the legs will be fine but the breat paler. Should this be the case, pull back the tinfoil from the breast area before placing back in the over for additional ‘browning’.
  4. After 2 hours took it out. Top browning a bit much. We drizzled olive oil on it. Added a bit of parchment paper on top and loose tinfoil.
  5. Put the bird back in oven having turned its direction in the oven.
  6. 4.5 hours total in oven

Roasties

  1. ROASTIES: parboil the peeled potatoes for 20 minutes. The potatoes should still be hard.
  2. Roll in goose fat. Put in oven uncovered for 30 minutes at 200C.

Notes

A trick to keep your turkey warm post cooking is to cover it with tinfoil AND some cloth towels wrapped around it :)