Slow Cooker Ham and Potato Soup

Just before Christmas I made slow cooker ham in Cherry Coke which was delicious. I deliberately cooked too much ham so I would have some left for another recipe the next day; if you have leftover ham from Christmas this is a great way to use it up (and any leftover potato and veg you have as well).

 

The quantities are easily adjusted depending on how much leftovers you have to use and how many people you are serving so my recipe is more of a rough guide.

I used:
2 cups leftover cooked ham, chopped
1 pork stock cube (you could also use chicken or vegetable)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (I used a raw carrot but you could use leftover cooked veg)
1 cup leftover mashed potato, cooked (you could also use leftover boiled or roast potatoes, or raw potatoes cut into small cubes)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream (you could also use leftover single or double cream)

Place all the ingredients in your slow cooker apart from the milk and cream, and add enough water to cover the veg.

Cook on high for 3 hours or medium for 5-6 hours.

When ready, take about half the soup out of the slow cooker and blend until smooth in a food processor.

 Return to the soup and mix in so it still has some chunks of meat and veg. Add the milk and cream and serve. You can add more water if you want the soup to be thinner but I liked it as it was.

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74 as the theme is Christmas.

I'm also sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Jen's Food as this recipe uses all sorts of leftovers.

Slow Cooker Ham in Cherry Coke

I've made a ham in Coca-Cola in the slow cooker before and thought it would be a good dinner in the week before Christmas - quite festive and also easy as you just put it in the slow cooker and forget about it.

 

I only had Coca-Cola though but I figured that would work - but this time rather than adding cloves, onion, carrots and bay leaves to the cola 'stock' I decided to just do it straight, in nothing but the cola, but then make a glaze from brown sugar and honey at the end.

So essentially that's all I did - I used two small gammon joints as I wanted this to do a second meal as well - I made ham soup the following day which was really good (recipe to follow!) and covered them in Cherry Coke. I put the slow cooker on high for 3-4 hours and when the joints were cooked, I removed them from the stock and put them in a roasting pan.

I mixed brown sugar with honey which I spread over the ham and then baked it in a hot oven for 20 minutes. I served it with a mixture of mashed and boiled potatoes and vegetables - the ham was very good and had a slightly sweet flavour from the stock and the glaze, and fell apart at the touch of a fork, in texture a lot like pulled pork.

I know for a lot of families it's traditional to have a ham at Christmas either alongside the turkey or to serve cold on Boxing Day so I highly recommend this recipe!

I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74, as the theme is Christmas.

 

 

I'm also sending this to Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as I made soup from this the following day.



Slow Cooker Ham in Coca-Cola

This is a great winter warmer of a recipe, that you can make in a casserole dish in the oven if you don't have a slow cooker. I got a slow cooker for my birthday this year - they use a lot less energy to cook than an oven, and you can put something on in the morning and come home to a cooked dinner, which is great if you are out at work all day.

I've made ham in Coca Cola before from a Nigella recipe but this recipe is adapted from the Hamlyn book "200 slow cooker recipes".

To serve 4, you need:

1.25kg boneless gammon joint

8 cloves

1 onion, cut into wedges or use baby onions

2 carrots, thickly sliced

2 bay leaves

900ml Coca Cola

1 tbsp. brown sugar

1 tbsp. tomato puree

2 tsp English mustard

First stud the onion with the cloves

Place the gammon in the slow cooker and surround with the vegetables and bay leaves

Pour the cola into a saucepan, add the sugar, tomato puree and mustard and bring to the boil, stirring.

Pour over the gammon, place the lid on the slow cooker and turn it on according to the manufacturer's instructions - this takes about 6-7 hours to cook on high, but as I am out of the house for longer than that, I had my slow cooker then switch to its 'keep warm' mode.

When the gammon has cooked it will be lovely and tender and the sauce will have reduced though I find that liquids in slow cookers don't really thicken.

The gammon fell apart at the touch it was so tender, and it tasted lovely 

I served this with new potatoes, vegetables and some leftover cauliflower cheese but you can serve it with whatever you like.

Orange and Honey-Glazed Ham

I've been meaning to share this recipe for a while, since I made it for dinner when my boyfriend's cousin and her husband came over. In fact he was her boyfriend at the time and they've been married for two months, so that shows how long ago this was! Unfortunately I can't remember the exact recipe I used, but this is pretty easy to make.

You need a large gammon joint, and a pan big enough for it to sit in. Some recipes suggest soaking the ham or gammon in water to remove the saltiness, but these days the method used to cure the meat means it isn't as salty as it once was (at least, that's what I read online). I didn't soak this and it tasted fine. Stud the meat all over with cloves.

Cover the ham with water, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer - how long it will take depends on the size of the meat. A lot of the fat will come out which is why the water in this picture looks cloudy. Some recipes suggest cooking the ham in orange juice, then using that to make a sauce, but I prefer to discard the cooking liquid as it gets quite oily and salty.

In a small bowl mix the juice and rind of one orange, with 2 tbsp honey

When the gammon is almost cooked, make some small cuts and pour the sauce over, so it penetrates the meat. Spoon the orange rind over the top, then cook in the oven for 20 minutes on a medium-high heat to glaze.

Slice and serve with mashed potatoes.

Gammon Steaks with Sloe Gin Sauce

I'm not a big gin drinker but have occasionally enjoyed a gin and tonic if there's a decent twist of lime, but sloe gin is something I don't really drink - though I do have a bottle of homemade sloe gin in the cupboard that my friend Jane gave me, and it's almost empty, so it obviously got drunk at some point!

The theme for this month's Baking with Spirit is gin, and I knew I'd eaten a few restaurant meals that used sloe gin in a savoury sauce, and decided I wanted to do something similar. My parents were visiting and we'd discussed what they wanted to eat for dinner and settled on gammon steaks, and I decided that a sloe gin sauce would work well with the gammon.

I had a look online for some recipes but ended up not really following one properly and kind of making it up as I went along, though it was pretty simple. Here's what you need to do:
1. Get your mum to cook the gammon steaks and make some mashed potato while you're on your way home from work (!)
2. Pour about 100ml of sloe gin into a pan and add half a beef stock cube and about 100ml of water
3. Bring to the boil and allow to bubble
4. Add about 50 ml double cream
5. Turn down the heat and cook until thickened
6. Serve over gammon, though this would also go well with other meats.

I also got the chance to use a really nifty little gadget my boyfriend bought me for my birthday (or was it last Christmas?). It's an auto-stirrer, so you stand it in a pan of sauce, switch it on and you can go off and do other things without needing to stand over the pan and constantly stir.

It's a great little gadget - it needs four AA batteries and is quite small so will fit even in the smallest pan. It stands upright and has four silicon feet at the bottom so it won't scratch your pan. You switch it on and it rotates and moves around in the pan, to stop your sauce sticking. It's absolutely perfect for anyone who is as impatient as me - I can never be bothered to stand over a pan and stir so often come back to find my sauce has started to stick!

Adding the cream to the sauce

Back in with the auto-stirrer

And here's the sauce poured over the gammon. It was really nice, if you've not had sloe gin before I would liken this more to a red wine sauce than normal gin, and it was nice and creamy and just the right consistency.

I'm sending this to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as the theme this month is gin. Shame I didn't get a chance to make a cake this month - I've made gin and tonic cupcakes before, which had tonic water in the cake and gin in the icing, which were really nice!