Need ideas for HAM!

[BlondieKate]

So bossman gave us a 9 lb ham for Christmas. We cooked it up on Sunday, and for the 2 of us, it's way too much to eat at once.

So I need your favorite ham recipes & suggestions!

Here's 1 of my own:
Spinach salad mix
some ham (surprise!)
hard-boiled egg, sliced
Ken's Sundried Tomato salad dressing.

Makes a great lunch for work!

[sandybear]

My Breakfast Bake is a good way to use up some ham,
you can also make a crustless quiche with ham,
add some to split pea soup (or just about any other soup for that matter),
chef salad for lunch could use some,
add some to leftover brown rice (or other grain) with a few veggies, some scrambled egg, and some soy sauce and you saute this in some healthy oil and you get fried rice,
a western omelet with ham, green peppers, and onion,
or just a mid-afternoon snack

[BlondieKate]

Looks good, thanks!

[saf2004]

If your ham has a bone, you have to use it for split pea soup. It's a rule! No ham bones are allowed to be thrown away without first making split pea soup out of them - otherwise you're wasting a perfectly good bone!

How to do this:
Take your bone and cut off as much of the fat as you can. Get rid of as much fat as possible. With the meat that's left, cut it into pieces the size that you'll want in your soup. It's also ok to leave meat on the bone still, as this will cook into and flavor your soup.

In a soup pot, start to cook a diced onion over medium heat with some garlic (approx. 4 big cloves). Add to that: diced celery (depending on the size of your pot, approx. 4 stalks, or 1/2 a whole head of celery) and finely shredded carrot (approx. 3 carrots - the more you put in, the sweeter the soup). Allow to cook until softened. Then, add 1 bag of split peas (sorted, no need to rinse) and your ham bone. Pour water to cover (for a 1# bag of peas, probably 8+ cups of water), put the lid on and bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer for 1-2 hours (I think - at least, cook until all softened). Depending on how it looks, I usually use my immersion blender at this point to blend it all together. If it's very liquidy, you can add some barley or oatmeal (quaker instant kind - approx. 1 cup dry if a big pot) to help thicken it up. Also, add the meat at this point and cook for another 30 minutes, or until thickner is blended throughout and meat is hot. Yum!!!!

Sorry that it's not exact - I'm the type that cooks until things "look right" so not great at sharing recipes, but this really is easy and not an exact recipe anyway. Enjoy!

[BlondieKate]

Actually, the last ham we had, we made soup (not split-pea, though).

Took the ham bone, added some water & potatoes. Let that cook on high in crockpot for about 3 hours. Removed the water, then added evaporated skim milk and regular skim milk. Also added some spices (like dill, dried spinach, etc). Let that cook on high for another hour or so (until the potatoes were soft).

Was very good.

[saf2004]

yum...that sounds good, too.
I forgot to add that the good thing about split pea is that it freezes well so it makes a good "tv dinner" or easy lunch in the future. Plus, by the end of the week, you're going to be so tired of ham, you won't want it for awhile, but the soup will be good in the freezer for when it sounds good again.

[ksusarah]

You can chunk it up and add it to your eggs in the morning. You can add it to salads.

I like to use www.allrecipes.com. they have a search engine for their site that allows you to put in the ingredients you have or want to use, and it will spit out recipes that have those ingredients. Hope this helps!

[ksusarah]

One more thing....because it's cooked all ready, you can refreeze it to be used later. It is safe to refreeze cooked meat. Put it into smaller containers, so you can grab it and defrost it for one or two meals, instead of having to defrost large amounts.

[nanajana]

I would cube it and make a breakfast casserole. Spray a 9 x 13" casserole mix no fat cheddar
with eggs and 1/2 cup skim milk. Add spinach, or brocoli along with mushrooms, ham and red peppers. 4 pcs of ww bread cubes on bottom of the casserole and pour it over. top with ff cheddar. Let sit in ref overnite for Sunday morning brunch. 4 slices of ww bread to count but since it is evely distributed I would count 2 for a large piece and be safe.

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