I've been cooking again. If you follow me on twitter, you'll know that all my uncles, cousin's and their kids were at my house. There were about 20 adults and almost the same number of kids present. It was my job to cook the meat. Our family will normally have a turkey for christmas. After all there is a large turkey processing facility in the area I grew up in and many of my family have either worked there or have relatives or in-laws that do.
I hate turkey.
I made ham. And even if I wouldn't let my family in the same room as my bourbon, I couldn't pass up a chance to put a little on the ham. I found this recipe on foodnetwork.com. This is not mine. I pass it along as a service to you because it is just damn good. Here is the original recipe, it's for a 5 pound ham (Bourbon Honey Glazed Ham). I realized after I went to the store that I was not going to have enough as I was cooking an 18 pound ham. So I improvised.
I'm sure the original is tasty, but here is what I made. It was delicious.
Improvised Bourbon Glaze
1 1/3 cup of Corner Creek Reserve Bourbon
1 cup of honey
1 cup Door County cherry flavored honey
2/3 cup molasses
1 cup orange marmelade
1 tablespoon whole cloves
Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cut diamonds in the top of the fatty portion of the ham and spoon glaze over it multiple times over the course of the last half hour of cooking.
I don't know that the cherry flavored honey added any flavor, but I had it on hand and it certainly didn't hurt. Unlike the original recipe I did not stud the ham. This thing had to be cut up and placed in a roasting pan to be served buffet style. So I boiled a reduced quanitity of cloves in the glaze to infuse it with clove flavor (probably should strain them out if you don't want your family to have punture wounds in their mouth...oops). And since I had left over glaze (like half of it) and I knew that pretty much only the top of the ham had the glaze, I poured it over the cut up ham as I placed it in the roaster to allow all of the pieces to enjoy the sweet bourbony goodness.
My entire family raved about it. And coming from 40 folks who wanted turkey instead, that's a pretty big win. Plus, now I get to eat really delicious ham sandwiches all week. For once I'm not regretting making so much.