Recipe The Mother Ship Spicy Slow-cooked Gammon

Morning Glory

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I’m calling this ‘the Mother Ship’ because apart from being delicious as it is, it forms the basis of so many other recipes. Its as easy as anything to do with virtually no preparation. No peeling required. Its also very economical. I use a 750g piece of gammon which at the time of writing cost only £3.50 ($4.60). Its a rolled piece of cured leg meat. These days gammon sold in the UK doesn't seem to be over salty so no pre-soaking is needed. The most difficult thing to do is straining the stock (if you wish to keep it).

I used this as the basis to make several other dishes as well as having a little left for a sandwich:
Pho using some the stock with fish sauce added, noodles, strips of gammon and poached quail's egg
Spicy Gammon and Turkey Burger
Spiced Gammon with Ravigote Sauce
Gammon Terrine with Pineapple and Chilli Relish

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Ingredients:
  • 750g unsmoked gammon
  • 2 Indian bay leaves
  • 1 red onion halved (unpeeled)
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 2 turnips (halve them, unpeeled)
  • 1 head of garlic (halved, unpeeled)
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns
  • 2 star anise
  • 1 blade of mace
  • Thumb of ginger, sliced (no need to peel)
  • Piece of cinnamon or cassia bark
  • 1 tbsp green cardamom seeds (leave whole)
  • 4 or 5 small carrots (no need to peel)

Method
  1. Place all the ingredients in a slow-cooker (crock-pot) or oven proof dish.
  2. Cover in boiling water (to just above the level of the ingredients.
  3. Cook on low heat for 4 hours.
  4. Strain off the stock. If using the stock, pass it through muslin, a coffee filter or (as I did) through kitchen paper placed in a sieve. This is important to achieve a clear stock which you can then use for other recipes. You should have approx. 500 - 600ml of stock.
  5. Serve the gammon, sliced hot or cold or use it in other recipes.
  6. The vegetables used can be eaten too although apart from the carrots, they don't retain their colour.

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The naked spicy cooked gammon:

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That looks lovely.

There should be a folder in you profile where you can add thread links to save routing round for them again. 😄
 
Beam me up Scotty. Lol. I'm not familiar with gammon, but the dish looks beautiful.

Gammon is the British name for Ham. So, anywhere you see "gammon" on this forum, just mentally replace it with "ham."

CD
 
That looks lovely.

There should be a folder in you profile where you can add thread links to save routing round for them again. 😄
There's a little bookmark icon at the top right (on my phone, anyway) of any post. You can click that to save a recipe, and then under your profile, there's a link to display all your bookmarks. :)
 
Gammon is the British name for Ham. So, anywhere you see "gammon" on this forum, just mentally replace it with "ham."

CD

Does that mean the Brits gammon it up, instead of hamming it up? Do they have gammon radios?
 
Morning Glory, that looks heavenly.

To other Americans, is uncured ham the ones we call "picnic" ham?
A picnic ham comes from the shoulder, and purists will get angry and point out that "it's not a ham!" - technically, it's got to come from the back leg to be a ham.

Every picnic ham I've ever seen in a shop is smoked, so it's not like what we call a fresh ham here, which is uncooked and unsmoked.

Cuts of meat are notorious for having different names in different areas, and I think pork has more names than all the other meats combined.
 
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Morning Glory, that looks heavenly.

To other Americans, is uncured ham the ones we call "picnic" ham?

No. Picnic is a cut of pork. It is the front leg below the pork butt/shoulder. A ham comes from the rear leg.

CD
 
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