Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Oooh and aaah

Monica of Homespun Heart fired up her blowtorch and made her own Honey Baked Ham!

Once I quizzed a student who worked there. He told me each ham is marinated in pear juice before being caramelized with glaze.

15 comments:

Rachel V. said...

Great link! I'll have to try this at Easter. :)

Lisa B. said...

I had never thought about pear juice. I'll have to give it a try also.

Anonymous said...

I have never done this with a ham. We love HBH. We are lucky to get a nice HBH as a gift every year from one of my husband's clients. I printed the recipe/instructions though to use on a store brought ham.
Another thing I wanted to share with you is something we learned years ago. In Texas barbeque is KING. Almost year round...when you want to use FRUIT wood to smoke a meat and you do not have apple wood or peach wood to put in your smoker, just use the PLAIN wood chips you buy in the store but soak them in the fruit juice instead of water before burning. This works great. Honest. I kid you not it has the same taste as apple wood. Roxie

Heather said...

Excellent Link! I am definitely trying this sometime!

Monica Wilkinson said...

Interesting! I'll have to think about how to incorporate pear juice into the recipe next time. It was already so juicy - I'm not sure how that works... Thanks for the link - Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

We love Honey Baked hams. I would have never guessed about the pear juice!

Jenn @ Frugal Upstate said...

That post caught my eye too! I really would love to try it, but I think my fancy cooking is done for a while. Maybe, as Rachel said, I'll try it around Easter (although my MIL usually cooks Easter dinner. Maybe I can bring the ham?)

Anonymous said...

Found you via Lotus. Glad I did!

Amy said...

Great link, Meredith! This post caught my eye too and I might have to give this a shot one year. Thanks for the idea!

Tubo Family said...

Interesting about the pear juice marinade. I worked at HBH about 15years ago and remember that they were just taking the hams straight from the packing house wrappers before carmelizing the sugar mixture with blow torches, but maybe there was pear juice in the wrappers?
Roxie, thanks for the hint on using juice on the wood chips!

Meredith said...

Alison, I think you're right--they came to the store already cooked, and whatever cooking/smoking/marinating involved pear juice somewhere else.

The cutting, foil wrapping and carmelizing takes place in the store.

Michelle Smiles said...

Happy new year!


Mmmm...honey baked ham sounds yummy!

Anonymous said...

Speaking hypothetically, of course, let's just say that one Christmas season while I was in college I was a "ham girl." pretend, several friends and I worked in a ham store (which company I will not say!) owned by a family in our church. And, hypothetically again, I do believe there was all manner of spice sprinkling and blow torching and foil wrapping going on...but no ham cooking! And that, my friends, is the "rest of the story!" The recipe that Monica used nails it!

Meredith said...

Ooh, thanks anonymous!

The ham is cooked/smoked somewhere, though, or else it wouldn't be fit to serve directly from the store.

Anonymous said...

Yes, of course, the hams arrive already cooked (smoked) no cooking, only torching, takes place at the store.