Teaching myself to cook, one recipe at a time.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Maple and Brown Sugar Glazed Ham

Hubby and I were lucky enough to receive some goodies from Omaha Steaks for Christmas, all wrapped up and frozen and waiting for a time for us to be ready for them. That time would have come earlier if I hadn’t forgotten about them, but it did eventually come.

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One of the goodies was a big ol’ boneless chunk of ham. I’m sure that cut probably has a legitimate name, but I don’t know what it is. Rather than simply heating according to the directions on the package, I decided to attempt to make a glaze for it. A quick search online and I found a decent recipe. I quartered it, since it was intended for a full-size holiday feast. I knew that it would still be a lot, but dividing the quantities by 4 was about the extent of my willingness to do math.

First, I melted one and a half tablespoons of butter. In retrospect, I am an idiot and that should have been one and a half teaspoons. I could do the math (I wrote it down correctly), but I just couldn’t get beyond that, apparently. Okay, here’s more butter than I needed.

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I added a quarter cup of maple syrup. God, I love maple syrup.

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Then 1 1/2 teaspoons (yes, teaspoons this time) of honey and a tablespoon of brown sugar. I know it looks like I put two in there, but that’s because my measuring spoon was 1/2 tbsp. The 1 tbsp one was dirty. Boo yah.

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Anyway, heat it up a bit and let the sugars melt together.

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Okay, here’s the thawed ham, chilling out in a greased dish.

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I poured the sauce over the ham and baked it, according to the directions on the package. I think the recipe for the glaze recommended basting, and that probably would have been great, but I just wasn’t willing to be that involved. I did put some aluminum foil over top, though, as per the recipe.

And this is what it looked like at the end:

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Sliced up all nice and paired with some rice and a salad.

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My salad included a sliced avocado just because I could and I wanted to indulge. I whipped up a batch of that maple-dijon salad dressing, and that pairing was divine. The sweetness of the ham glaze with the sweetness of the salad was perfect.

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I tried to balance the sweetness with a bit of saltiness by putting soy sauce on some rice. The effect was bizarre and not nearly as pleasant as I would have expected. The soy sauce was a bad choice, though it wasn’t horrible.

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And that was dinner!

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The glaze was really nice. It was more watery than I expected or really wanted, but I suppose that could have had something to do with putting three times as much butter as I was supposed to. But it was sweet and yummy, and the ham was juicy.

I followed up with a 100-calorie Skinny Cow vanilla ice cream with caramel, from our freezer. I wasn’t the only one who thought it looked delicious.

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