Glazed ham

It's Christmas. There's food, drink, time off work and more Mariah Carey than anyone could call healthy. Whichever way you slice it, despite the Carey, it's a fab time of year. This one's the first with the water bath and it's being used to its fullest, not because I'm trying to crowbar it into proceedings just because I've got one, but because it's the best tool for certain cooking jobs. In today's episode - gammon.

Now if you're the kind of person who doesn't get off on detail, this one's a mixed bag so skip to the end for the summary and you'll save yourself a few minutes. For the rest of us though, there's lessons to be learnt from the mistakes in the middle so read on.

I've always cooked our hams on the hob in a nalophan bag. This recreates sous vide conditions pretty well but there's downsides to doing it this way. Firstly, you need a nalophan bag. Secondly, it's a finger in the air job to know when it's done. With a water bath however, you can ensure it's evenly and safely cooked all the way through. Plus, if you're a dimwit like me, you can come dangerously close to buggering the whole thing up right at the very end, which is always a bonus.

Vital statistics - 65 degrees for 10½ hours

The more observant of you will notice I've used a bag 2 yards longer than it needs to be but there's a reason for this - I'm a cretin. To be honest, cutting bags down doesn't go too well once you've got food in because one edge cuts slightly shorter than the other meaning it's a pain in the jacksy trying to get it under the tabs in the sealer. It's similar to wrapping a present, realising you've got too much paper and hacking it down while the present's still in it. And we all know how well that goes don't we??

The only reason I've included the next picture is because the skin at the bottom right looks like a mouth.

When you buy a Sous Vide Supreme you get a rack for holding food in place but it won't take large items of food like a joint of gammon. To sort out this little teaser, I've bought a rack that sits on the perforated grille at the bottom and lifts the meat away from the circulating water underneath.

The concern I had was that it wouldn't fit, despite us measuring any number of joints with a ruler in the supermarket, looking like a couple of spanners in the process. I needn't have worried - there was space around it for the water to flow around. Bear in mind it'll expand by a centimetre or so as it cooks so make sure it stays covered.

10½ hours later and we're done. Why 10½ and not 10? I'm not sure to be frank. 10 would've been plenty.

Now if this was a steak, I'd pop it in the fridge and think nothing of it but because of the thickness of the meat, it'd take too long for the middle to get cold allowing pathogens to multiply. To cool it quickly, there's a couple of ways to do it - make an ice bath and keep topping it up with ice as it melts, or pop it into the blast chiller. This time I went with the ice bath method but next time I'd probably do exactly the same as I haven't got a blast chiller. It's on the Christmas list though along with the chamber sealer, neither of which my girlfriend will be happy to read.

Why cool it before popping it in the oven? Because I was cooking it at such a high temperature, only the outside was going to warm up and that's heat that's easy to get rid of. It's the core temperature that's tricky to shed, hence the ice bath to sort that issue out.

And this is what you get ; ham encased in a ton of jelly.

The jelly makes it difficult to see where the skin ends and the meat starts but pick a spot, make a start and you'll be able to see where you're going after that.

Score the fat to give it some surface area.

Now at this stage we're about 12 hours in and it's about time to ruin it with a bad decision or two. For some reason, I've never been able to make a glaze that sticks. It always turns to liquid, slides off and forms a pool in the bottom of the pan. If you're thinking of making ham in a water bath you'll need to Google the glaze as I can't help you with that bit. Or lasagne, I can't cook lasagne either.

And here it is with the glaze a full 2" under the ham it's supposed to be coating. I tried spooning it over but it's like trying to stick eggs together - neither's got any purchase on the other.

Sometimes, you've gotta change a plan to keep the plan on track so my theory was to blowtorch it to get some tasty charred bits, reduce the glaze a bit and spoon it over at the end. In all fairness it wasn't the plan that was bad, it was the execution.

The blowtorching gave it a great look.

Then I drizzled the glaze over the top. The issue was it thickened as it cooled and made it look like an icing rather than a glaze. I was worried that it'd go hard giving us a pork-based toffee apple but it worked out pretty well, just not particularly pretty.

So for the final verdict. I'd definitely do the glaze differently but that's beyond the scope of this blog. The other thing I'd do is drop the temperature a bit. I've cooked smaller pieces of gammon to 65 before and they've been fab but this one could've taken a little less - maybe 63 is what I'd go for next time.

What the water bath did for us is cook it evenly, without guesswork, without begging a butcher for a bag while freeing up the oven for other stuff. I'd definitely recommend it, just don't put me in charge of the glaze.