For many people, there is no Christmas without ham. For me personally, it is all about the Pepperpot and homemade bread. The ham is front and centre whether at breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner and all the little sandwich-snacking over the holidays. I’ve received quite a few emails and direct messages about how to bake ham and since it’s still early enough to purchase a ham, here are some tips and advice on to go about preparing it for the holiday meal.
Types of Ham
Most of the ham we get today in the Caribbean is wet cured (soaked in brine) and already fully cooked. When it comes to the cut of the ham, we usually get leg ham or shoulder cut ham, sometimes labelled as picnic ham.
Leg ham comes from the back legs of the pig and shoulder ham comes from the front legs of the pig. The leg hams are meatier, have less fat and take less time to cook. This is so because the legs do not do much work, or they are not muscularly strained as much as the shoulders are. What this means of course is that the shoulder cut ham has a higher fat content, more connective tissues and takes longer to cook.
