Crock Pot Honey Ham

Deck the table with plates of pork! Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!  Tis the season, to eat hammmmmmmm! Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la! Don we know our body bibs! Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la! While I tell of left-o-VERSSSSSS! Fa, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!

Barry has done this thing to our family. He takes normal songs and remakes the words. He’s ruined a ton of good Christmas songs. So, just for you I’ll give you his #1 hit…and if you are offended by the word fart, do not read ahead.

“Last Christmas, I let a big fart! But the very next day, it wafted away! This year, I’ll bring you to tears, I’m saving up something special.”

So, today I bring you HAM! The angels rejoice! I love a good ham. I purchased this ham around Easter when it was on a good sale. I froze it in two pieces because it was a 6 pound ham, and there are only 3 of us eating meat at this point.  So we wouldn’t get sick of ham, I decided to divide and conquer. Who am I kidding? No one gets sick of ham. That’s like saying, “Nah, I’m tired of chocolate, thanks anyway …” Said NO ONE EVER.

My recipe calls for a fully cooked ham. If you want to cook another type, just increase your time until it’s done in the center. Ham cooks up really nice in the crock.

Let me address dry meat in the crock for just a second. Not all crocks are created equal. Some crocks dry food out very badly – they cook hot and let out too much liquid. Some crock lids have a steam escape do-hickey (that’s a technical term) and some don’t. Learn your crock. If everything in your crock turns out badly, it’s probably time for a new crock. Use your old one to make soap or plant some flowers in it. I use my old one for chicken food. You. Must. Love. Your. Crock. Amen.

Now, let’s talk sweeteners. I used raw honey and coconut sugar for this. That’s two of our main sweeteners of choice. If you don’t use those, that’s cool. You can use whatever kind of honey you have hanging around – and you should have honey hanging around. Since we’ll be heating it up in this recipe, you’re not getting the nice properties of raw honey anyway…but that’s all I had. I <3 raw honey.

And coconut sugar – this is my FAVORITE granulated sweetener but I don’t use it as often as sucanat because of the expense. I love how it tastes and that eating it doesn’t put you into a sugar coma. If you don’t have coconut sugar, you can easily use brown sugar or even sucanat. I wouldn’t use white sugar for this because the brown sugar gives it a nice depth of flavor.

Somewhere in time, fruit juice became the devil. Not sure when that happened. Yep, I realize that drinking fruit juice on a daily basis might make you jiggly – but I don’t think it arrived in America straight from the pits of you know where. I still use juice in a lot of the things I make…but not enough to use it up before it goes bad.

So, I buy the REAL stuff…you know, the stuff without a bunch of junk added. I freeze it in one cup portions so that I have a little here and there when I need it – like now.

Your fully cooked ham is hot in the middle when it reads 140. I actually cook mine until it’s about 160 degrees. Why? Who knows – I’m a creature of habit. Husbands, if your wife doesn’t have a meat thermometer in her kitchen, it would be a great stocking stuffer…and it would assure that you’re likely to get ham in the near future. It’s a miracle tool. Subliminal messages are the best gifts.

Pull the ham out and let it stand for about 30 minutes. Mine usually stands longer than that because I get busy wiping faces and behinds and dancing around the kitchen to “You Spin Me Right Round Baby” by the Chipmunks. True story.

Standing helps keep the juices nice and inside or something like that – that’s what I read. I let mine stand so it cools down enough that I don’t burn the dickens out of my hands when I slice it.

This ham is good hot. This ham is good cold. This ham is good in the pot 9 days old. Actually, I’m not sure about that last part – because mine doesn’t ever stick around for 9 days. Who has 9 day old food? If you do, something is up. Eat. More. Food.

This makes a lovely ham biscuit or a side to eggs and fruit for breakfast. Or a snack.

NOTE: This would likely double very well, but I wouldn’t double the OJ, just the other ingredients.