December 20
7:21am,
received from boss at the day job
Good morning!! Random question of the day…
7:22am,
received from boss at the day job
Do u like ham?
7:25am,
sent to boss at the day job
Good morning! Of course I like ham, it’s meat =P
Phase I: Boning the Ham
So
my boss gave me a whole ham for Christmas.
He got it as a gift from one of our consultants, and had no need for
it. He stuck it in the freezer at the
office, where it stayed until March. I
got it home and thawed just in time for St. Patty’s Day.
So
what does one do with an entire
bone-in ham?
My
first thought, naturally, was Ham and Bean Soup!! So I went recipe hunting and found out how
much ham I would need. One and a half cups. One and
a half cups? Crap, what am I
supposed to do with the rest of this fucking ham?
Friday, March 14
St. Patty’s Prep
First
thing’s first. I need that bone. Boning a ham should be fairly
self-explanatory, yes? The bone is in
the ham. The ham is around the
bone. Cut the ham off and what do you
have left? You guessed it: bone. And
it doesn’t really matter what it looks like, I don’t need uniform slices; I’m
going to be cubing most of it anyways.
I’m not cooking for Gordon Ramsey here.
Sounds
easy, right?
So
just jump right in and slice a big chunk off!
Then another chunk! And
ano—whoops, hit the bone. Turn the knife
up a bit, and keep slicing! A little
here, a little there. . . . the chunks keep getting smaller and smaller as the
bone reveals itself . . . to be . . . way too big for my soup pot. That’s okay, I happen to know a guy with bone
saw I can borrow. I set aside three cups
of meat (because fuck it), wrap and bag the rest to go back in the freezer, a
couple pounds per bag.
Put
the beans in water to rehydrate. (Pro
tip: add baking soda to the bean water;
it cuts down on gas emissions. Trust me,
you’ll thank me later.)
Next,
bone out that rotisserie chicken I bought for the buffalo chicken dip. BONE ALL THE THINGS!
Wait,
that’s . . . never mind.
The
chicken is easy because I can use my hands for most of the job, pulling the
meat off the bones. I do love to play with my food.
Once
the chicken is boned and shredded it goes back into the fridge, and I go to bed
because holy crap that took all night.
Phase II: Cooking the Ham
Sunday, March 16
Head
to the shop first thing so Tommy can split this ham bone before anything else
goes through the saw. He cuts it in
three pieces, 2 pounds each—this bone is huge—and
rewraps it for freezing. While I’m
there, Burt offers me . . . more bones.
Um . . . this bone’s going to last me a while, thanks. I’m going to be smart with my bone—I’m not
going to use it all at once; I’m going to conserve some for future use.
The
soup’s going to take three hours to cook, so I need to get that started. You’ll need a pot big enough to fit your bone
into. Large bones don’t work well in
tiny pots; you don’t want to waste a bunch of time trying to jam a giant bone
into tight places where it won’t fit. A
standard Dutch oven should do the trick easily.
Choose
a bone with a lot of meat on it. Meaty
bones work best for this recipe.
Once
you’ve got your hands around the bone, you need to get it wet.
Soaking
wet.
Drenched.
Never
work with a dry bone, and always makes sure you have plenty of extra lubrication
on-hand, should the bone suddenly become . . . un-moistened. Our lubrication today is 14 cups of
water.
Then
you have to get it hot.
So
hot that it burns at the touch.
Bring
it to a boil, reduce the heat, simmer for an hour. Add the beans and some thyme, cook another
hour. Add the veggies (celery, onion,
carrot), simmer 40 minutes. By now the
meat should be dripping off the bone; slip the bone out and pick it clean.
Mash
up half the soup with a potato masher.
By now the broth is thick enough for this to be Ham & Bean Stew, and mashing up the beans and
veggies makes it even thicker. Finally,
add that extra three cups of meat we set aside earlier—or more, if you like. Never less.
Who doesn’t love more meat?
And
of course, always salt and pepper to taste.
Enjoy
shoveling all that thick, meaty goodness into your mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment