Follow-up to today’s Slow Cooker Ham & Rice Experiment …

Wouldn’t it be handy if I could somehow succinctly sum-up my slow cooker ham and rice experiment — perhaps using a 1-10 score card system or a red/yellow/green-light indicator?

Well … I don’t have that … so let’s break it down in short order.  Ready … GO!

The Rice

In the previous post I wrote two ways to slow cook rice.  I’m going to have to try this again because my 2 parts water to 1 part rice flopped.  About half of it turned to mush.  I received a text from my mom about 4 hours into cooking saying that she does equal parts water and rice then cooks on high for 1 hour.  OOPS!  When I’ve had her slow cooker rice it’s turned out great.  I’ll have to try this the next time I need rice.

The Ham

Cooking the ham for 8 hours was of course easy.  When I pulled the pieces out of my 2 slow cookers the work to clean it out (remove the fat, bone, etc) was straightforward but a bit time consuming … but then at times I can be fastidious.

At the beginning of this work I took a nibble and the ham seemed to be on the bland side*.  I didn’t know if this was because of the way I cooked it or if it was just a lower-salt ham**.  As my ham cooled the flavour seemed to return.  I suspect this happened as a result of the water I cooked it with steaming out.

Ultimately I opted to give the ham a little boost improvising a simple glaze with what I had on hand.  In a 2 cup  measure I started with a healthy splash of apple cider vinegar.  Then I added a healthy dollop of molasses followed by a hearty sprinkling of Johnny’s Seasoning Salt, then about as much warm water as the molasses.  After mixing I felt that the volume was a bit low, so I doubled everything except the vinegar.  In increments I poured this around on the meat, tossed the meat, and repeated until all of my ‘glaze’ was in.  I then cooked on high for another hour.  It didn’t ‘glaze’ of course, but it made additional elements of flavour.
(Hindsight — I could have used a cap or two of liquid smoke as well.)

In the end, it turned out pretty tasty — not fantastic, but I think this shows promise.  This is definitely worth another attempt along with some further tweaking.

(WARNING – SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION in another 3… 2…)

Well, back to work on completing my ***FIRST RECIPE BOOK***.  It’s pretty close to being done!

* It made me think of the 1979 Coppola film “Apocalypse Now” when the character Jay ‘Chef’ Hicks talked about military cook training when they boiled beautiful cuts of meat — I thought my ham was destroyed.
** If you’re not familiar with how ham is cured there are 3 common ways, 2 of which use a special pink salt which gives ham its color.

Links

• Ham – Wikipedia
• Rice – Wikipedia
• Slow cooker – Wikipedia
• Fastidious | Merriam-Webster – see “fastidious Has a Disgusting Past” about 1/2 way down the page
• Apocalypse Now – Wikipedia