When it comes to cooking a gammon, some people find themselves feeling a little intimidated, but there’s really no reason to be.
If you’re going to boil your gammon joint, you’ll firstly need a pan big enough to fit the entire joint in, with room for covering it completely with liquid. You can use water, fruit juice, cider, or whatever you fancy, along with a mixture of herbs to add flavour to your gammon. Simply cover your gammon joint with your chosen liquid, bring it to the boil and allow to simmer. To work out how long to cook your gammon for, weigh the joint when raw and allow 20 minutes per 450g (1lb), plus an additional 20 minutes.
You can also roast your gammon joint in the oven. Similarly to calculating the cooking time for boiling, firstly you need to weigh your raw gammon joint, but this time, allow 30 minutes per 450g (1lb), plus an additional 30 minutes, and cook it at 180°C (350°F or Gas Mark 4). Place the gammon joint in a large roasting tin, cover with foil and cook for the time you previously worked out, and about 20-30 minutes from the end, take the foil off. If you want to add a glaze, you can do this at about 20 minutes or so before the end to avoid it catching and burning. You can use any number of ingredients, including classic flavours such as honey and maple syrup, or even try something a little different, like marmalade, an orange and soy sauce glaze or any other of your favourite flavours.
An alternative method is to boil the gammon for half of the calculated cooking time and simply to roast the joint for the remainder of the cooking time. If you want to add your favourite glaze to the gammon dish, add the glaze about 20 minutes from the end of the cooking time.
For more detailed information and inspiring ideas, take a look at our selected mouth-watering gammon and ham recipes!