Hold the phone, there honky! Do that thing say what I think it do? Weeping Radish Brewery?! Zoom in there for a second.
Weeping Radish! I knew it! Now I'm going to go ahead and drop a bit of knowledge on you. Weeping Radish Brewery in the glorious Outer Banks of North Carolina was the first brewery to open in North Carolina post-prohibition. The owner of this glorious brewery helped to motivate the brewing industry by driving down to the capital city and demanding the legal ABV of a malt beverage be raised to 15.4% and that free tastings be allowed during tours. Now that he has somewhat gotten brewery laws to a good place, he's moved on to butcher shops. A LOT of meat in NC was being produced in NC in humane ways but because of butchering laws farmers had to send their meat to Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and other states to be butchered. Uli Benowitz of Weeping Radish said 'ENOUGH' and is now lobbying for butchering laws to be relaxed in NC so that people like me (and hopefully you) can buy your meat from a farmer 50 miles away, have it processed and packaged within another 50 miles of that, and then dropped at your door with minimal gas miles on it.
This message brought to you buy my thesis.
Moving along.... I decided to cook the ham tonight. Boneless 3 lb smoked ham. I looked up some recipes and since I'm a broke college student I decided to make do with what I had in the kitchen and just buy oranges and cloves to complete the recipe. By the way, Ms. Joy of Cooking was very little help for this meal. Anyway, here's my modified smoked ham recipe**:
1 3lb ham (or whatever size they give you at your local butcher shop)
1/2 cup Honey
2 Oranges
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
Buttload of whole cloves
**all measurements for this recipe were eyeballed and then guestimated for your cooking ease.
Oh... you noticed my oranges are on a Krispy Kreme box? Let me explain. 1) The hot sign was on and you know I can't not stop when the hot sign is on. 2) It says 'fun' right there on the box and I'm always down for a good time. 3) The Krispy Kreme Challenge is in less than a month and I had just gone on a run and I'm in training mode.
Step 1: Go to school, work, play with the dog, go for a run, then take the ham out to thaw (oops). I would recommend moving the ham to the refrigerator before doing all those things I just said.
Step 2: Thaw ham in the microwave for about 5-7 minutes
Step 3: Ham still a little too frozen to stab the cloves in? Grab those tongy things from your grill kit (you know the giant fork with only two prongs) and stab your ham multiple times so you can put the cloves in the newly created holes.
Step 4: Combine honey, cinnamon, and brown sugar in a mixing bowl. Squeeze the life out of the oranges so you get as much juice out of them as possible into the mixture. Put some of the pulp in there too for good measure (and then eat the remaining pulp)
You should now have a very stabbed ham and some orange goop that smells amazing. If you don't have these two things.... I don't know what to tell you. This is a very easy recipe.
Step 5: Crap. Did you preheat the oven? Go with 375. Seems to be a good temperature for meats.
Step 6: Put the ham into a shallow baking dish and dump the orange gobbledygook on top. It should appear something delicious looking like this:
Ok. If this doesn't look/smell awesome already then you should probably give up the vegetarian game and start eating meat. For the record... ham does not photograph well. This looks like every picture of spam from housewife manuals from WWII
Step 7: Put the ham in the oven and throw an aluminum tent on top of it. This should help it cook through without drying out; like a turkey. Every now and then go baste it. It should really just take an hour to cook but mine took more like and hour and 15 or an hour and 30. It's done with your meat thermometer says 130ish. Since it's already smoked it should be good to go.
Step 8: Make all the other sides... broccoli is always delicious and you probably have some in your freezer or buried back in the depths of your vegetable drawer. Now is a good time to eat that. Ham also always comes with mashed potatoes because mashed potatoes are the best. Make sure to use 1 stick of butter per 3 potatoes in your mashed potatoes. Don't worry... you went for a run today so you're allowed to eat the whole stick of butter.
Step 9: Begin preparing all the things together and yell at everyone in the living room to pause the movie so you can watch too (rude).
Step 10: Serve and enjoy.
Delicious Level: 4/5 Noms (om nom nom nom nom) - Tasty but dosent hold a torch to those short ribs!
Difficulty Level: totes whatevs
Lesson Learned: Thaw ham before cooking. Derp.
Here's to eatin' good and eatin' local! Cheers and uff-da!
