Bulk {Batch} Cooking with a Whole Ham

Hello lovely readers. I’ve been busy since the Christmas season but now I’m back to share more batch/bulk cooking sessions with you. Happy New Year and I hope your Christmas was a blessed one. This week I’m sharing different ways to use a whole ham. Ham is cheapest to buy during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. This is a good time to buy one for your holiday meal plus an extra to freeze for cooking later. You may even find a deep discount after the holidays if they are trying to get rid of them. I purchase around a 10.5 lb. spiral ham during Christmas.  It was a bargain since I only paid $10 for it. I do all I can to get the most out of a ham. Let me share how I get several different meals out of one ham.

I started off by cooking the ham for my holiday meal. We prefer the spiral hams because they are already pre-sliced, but any type of ham you cook will work for what I’m about to share. After we eat our meal I go to work on separating the meat. I NEVER put my ham in the refrigerator on the bone to eat off of in the coming days. I don’t find I can stretch my meat that way. Remember I’m trying to get the MOST I can out of this ham.

I gather my pan of cooled down ham, gallon and quart sized Ziploc bags, a sharpie (for labeling my bags), a quart size Mason jar, a big hand held strainer (with a long handle), wide mouth funnel, and a pair of disposable gloves. I find it’s best to label the Ziploc bags first while my hands are still clean. I can pretty much look at how much meat I have left to know what bags to label. Next I sit down at the table, put on the gloves, and start separating the slices of meat still left. I put that in a gallon Ziploc bag so that we can have slices to warm up to eat or make sandwiches with. There is usually a hunk of ham that didn’t get pre-sliced. I pull that meat from the bone and cut into cubes. I can get 2 quart sized bags filled with 2 cups of cubed ham in each to use in some of the ideas I listed below. The only thing I have left is a little meat still left around the bone. I put that in a gallon sized bag to freeze and use later for making a soup or something like a crockpot meal of green beans, potatoes, and ham. After a few hours of cooking the rest of the meat easily comes off the bone. I pull it off and put back into the crockpot while the meal finishes cooking. I just throw away the bones from there.

As for the juices left in the bottom of my pan (when I was separating the meat from the bone to put into Ziploc bags), I place a wide mouth funnel over my Mason jar, fit my strainer on it, then pour in the broth/juices. I usually only have this much left. I let it sit in the refrigerator over night so that the fat rises to the top. I can easily scrap it off this way. I use this to make some of the things I have listed below.

Meal ideas to serve cooked, sliced, or cubed ham in:

* Make Scalloped Potatoes with Ham

* Casseroles (breakfast or dinner)

* Scrambled eggs with Ham

* Quesidillas

* Omelets

* Quiche

* Frittatas

* Strata
* Hash

* Cobb Salad

* Pasta Salad

* Make Mac-N-Cheese with Ham

* Make Stromboli

* Make Hawaiian Pizza
* Make Bisquick type ham and cheese balls

* Make sandwiches (even ham salad like chicken salad sandwiches) or Ham and cheese slidders
* Make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches

Use ham broth in:

* When cooking a bag of dry beans (I replace one cup of my water with this)
* One Pot Meal
* Soup (I replace a few cups of water along with this)

* Stew

* Chowder

These are just some examples of the many things you can do. If any other things come to mind, I may come back to add to this list later. What can you think of that I haven’t added to the list? Please fee free to let me know in the comments below. I will be back with you soon with another bulk cooking session.

 


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