Ham in Not Coke

In March, I shared my Ham in Coke recipe. This was how I have been making ham for most of the time I have been married. It's a great recipe except my family and I have been trying to give up soda and look at giving up all artificial stuff in our food. That created a slight dilemma when it came to cooking the ham I had set aside for a Sunday family dinner. Not one to really faulter in the face of a challenge, I figured it can't be too hard to replicate a soda-like beverage for boiling my ham. What we ended up with was the best ham I have ever made. My husband, who always says he doesn't like ham, said if I made it that way every time he'd be a fan. It was a really recipe and open to a lot of interpretation.

Ham in Not Coke:
1 family sized ham, bone-in
Water to cover ham
1 large onion or two small onions, sliced (I quartered the small onions)
1 cup sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, or combination of
1 TB vanilla
Place ham in large pot and cover with water. If ham is pre-cooked then mix "soda" to taste, if not place ham in water after seasoned. Add sugar and vanilla to water until it tastes similar to soda. Add onions. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for a few hours (this really depends on how much time you have and what your plans our). I let mine simmer for nearly 4 hours.
Remove ham from stock and place on baking sheet. My ham had cooked so long that the fat was seperating from the meat. I scraped the fat off and returned it to the stock water. If your fat is not removed, score it to allow the glaze to penetrate.
Make glaze - 1/2 cup honey, 1 TB ground mustard, 1 teas Chinese Five Spice (or a combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, anise and allspice). Spoon glaze on ham. Set under preheated broiler until the glaze has carmelized (about 5 minutes or so).
Slice up and serve. Reserve the stock for beans (currently my husband has black beans boiling in the stock and keeps telling me they taste really good but I am at work while he's making the beans).

Sweet and Sour Meat

I opted to title this Sweet and Sour Meat because I make this with pork or chicken. You really could use any meat (or no meat) if you desired. Long ago I used to bread and fry chicken nuggets to serve with this sauce but I really prefer the meat unbreaded and made into the sauce so it absorbs some of the great sweet and sour flavor.
This is one of those recipes that my mom got from the ladies group at church when I was a kid. It was one she made on occassion at home but it was a lot of work frying the chicken (another reason why I don't make little nuggets). Somehow I got the little photocopied booklet and created my own version.
I made this last night with chunk pineapple since the store was out of crushed and it worked nicely. I can't remember the exact size of the can but it's what I would consider a normal sized can (maybe around 14 oz). Also I have found that reducing the vinegar to 1 cup helps cut the bite that my family is not so fond of. I use plain white vinegar but this could be good with rice vinegar.
I serve it over rice with extra soy sauce.

Sweet and Sour Chicken
1-2 pounds chicken or pork, cut into bite sized pieces
1 onion, diced
1-2 green peppers, diced
1 can crushed pineapple with juice
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/3 cup vinegar
4 tbs. soy sauce
2 tbs. Worcestershire sauce
4 tbs. cornstarch
1 cup cool water
1 cup ketchup
In a deep skillet or large saucepan (not huge but at about 12 inches across and 5-6 inches deep), heat enough oil to cover bottom of pan. Add meat and brown. Add onions and green peppers. Saute until just tender. Mix cornstarch with cool water until all the starch is dissolved. Add to pot with remaining ingredients. Stir until well mixed and begins to thicken. Remove and serve over rice.

Ham in Coke

This isn't technically an Irish recipe but ham is an alternative to Corned Beed and this method is the only way my family will eat ham (except for the occassional sandwich). Buying a good ham is not as easy as it used to be. Look for a "real" ham and not a processed hunk of pork. Real ham has a lot of flavor - skin on is best with the bone still inside. I found this recipe in a Nigella Lawson book. I have even used Cherry Coke which gives a slight fruity flavor.

Ham in Coke
4-41/2 pd bone-in ham
1 onion, peeled and halved
2 liter coke
Cloves
1 TB molasses
2 teas English mustard powder
2 TB brown sugar
Place ham in pot, skin side down if possible. Add onion and coke. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Cover and simmer 2 hours or 1 hour for every 2 pounds. Remove ham from stock. Remove skin. Score fat and dot with cloves. Rub with molasses. Pat on mustard and sugar. Cook in foil-line roasting pan at 500 degrees for 10 minutes.

Save the stock and make:

Black Bean Soup
3 cups dried black beans
Coke stock from above and water
Juice of ½ lime
1 teas cumin
1 teas coriander
Cook beans in stock and water (cover over 2 inches) until tender. Let come to boil and reduce to low – cook 1-11/2 hours. Add lime juice and spices. Serve with sour cream.
-can remove 3 ladles of beans and puree with spices before seasoning if desired (I found this to be a pain so we skip this step).

Pork and Rice

One of the few things my father made as we were growing up is a Kraft recipe for Pork Chops and Rice. Things have changed but we still love this concotion. My father's original recipe uses regular rice and bakes in the oven. I found a new version of this recipe that makes it on the stove with minute rice. The original recipe also calls for creamed soup but it is not gluten or dairy free.
Here is how we revamped the recipe for last nights dinner.
4 pork chops
2 cups minute brown rice
2-3 cups liquid (we used a combination of soy milk and water)
1/2 stick Nucoa
1 onion chopped
3 celery stalks chopped
1 package instant dry soup mix (we used onion and later realized it had barley yeast - which I have no idea what that is but we are not sure it's gluten free. There are plenty of soup mixes out there that are though)
Melt Nucoa in a deep frying pan (we have something called a chicken pan which is a cast iron skillet-like pan that is about 3 inches deep with a lid). Brown pork chops in Nucoa. Remove pork chops and place in an oven at 300 - 350 to keep warm and cook more of the center. Fry onion and celery until tender. Add liquid and bring to a boil. Add soup mix and rice. Top with pork chops from oven (it seemed like it took awhile for the veggies to saute but then we were cooking slowly). Cover with lid and cook until rice is tender. Serves 4 very comfortably.
Using the brown rice does mean it needs to cook slightly longer than white rice and requires more liquid.

Pork and Mushrooms

This was a neat little experiment that came out really good. My meat didn't brown the way I would have preferred but it didn't come out tough.

Melt 1/2 cube of nucoa in a deep skillet. Saute 1 chopped onion, 1-2 pounds cubed pork (I had purchased pork stew meat so I am not positive what cut it was), and sliced mushrooms (I buy mine pre-sliced since it's the same price as whole mushrooms - I think it's 8 oz). Cook until the onions are translucent and the pork is cooked thoroughly. Mix 2 TBs cornstarch into 2 cups milk (I used soy just fine). Pour over meat and veggies. Stir carefully until the sauce is thick. Season with gluten-free soy sauce and serve over rice. It wasn't overly saucey so if you want more sauce add 1 TB cornstarch to each cup of milk and mix together before adding to pan.