This recipe will show you how to make an easy Thanksgiving or Christmas ham. We will start off by baking the ham with an orange honey glaze on top which will dry and become delicious and crispy before being served. Does that not sound delicious? First off, the ingredients:
Ingredients:
Farm raised ham - At least six pounds
Butter - One-half vup
Organic honey - One cup
Fresh orange juice - One-half cup
Vanilla extract - One teaspoon
Fresh rosemary - Just a pinch!
First, place the ham in a big pot and in the orange juice over ham; it should run to the bottom of the pot, it should be touching the bottom of the ham. Secondly you should pour in the honey, it should be slowly drizzled all over the ham and it will slide down the sides leaving a nice, even coating for a good flavor. The third step will be to cut the butter into eight 1-tablespoon-size pieces to lay over the ham so it melts in and adds its salty flavor to the sweetness of the honey and tartness of the orange juice to create a harmony of flavors. This ham should cook for over four and one half hours in the oven at 275 degrees for the best flavor and extra special tenderness which will definitely impress your guests and/or family during Thanksgiving or Christmas. Cooking it at a low temperature will give the flavors more time to infuse the meat with the sweet citrus flavor. After the meat has cooked you should take it out and let it sit for at least one hour. It should sit for a long time for the new liquids absorbed into the ham need to be homogenized between the cells to evenly distribute the flavor, it works like this because all space between the cells must be filled so it sucks in the honey and orange juice to fill the space where the intracellular fluid is lacking because it was cooked out through evaporation. Anyway, enough with the chemistry, after you have let it sit for a decent amount of time you should take a sprig of rosemary and strip the leaves off and just sprinkle the leaves onto the pork for a great aromatic flavor which will make your guests and or family members mouths water. I hope this helps, I love this recipe and my family does too!
