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Arts & Entertainment

Hamming It Up for Easter

Baked ham is the traditional home-cooked meal for Easter, and with good reason!

Each year, I look forward to cooking a baked-ham Easter dinner.

Since it was the traditional meal on Easter when I was growing up, it brings back fond memories of pastel-colored candy, egg decorating and new Easter dresses and shoes. Oh, and it tastes great, too!

The best hams, in my opinion, are the bone-in type. The bone adds delicious flavor to the meat, helps keep it moist, and you can make a wonderful soup once the last of the meat has been eaten. (Set some ham aside to add to the soup once it’s almost done, and leave some on the bone for flavor while the soup is cooking.)

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will have spiral-cut bone-in hams in time for Easter, either honey cured or brown sugar cured, which will have a sweeter taste. There should be plenty in stock, but you can also call ahead and ask the butcher to reserve one for you.

and also are already stocking bone-in hams, and in Santa Cruz has good deals as well.

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Back in the days when I worked for the Motor Division, a group of us would get together and throw a Christmas party. We’d sell tickets so we could rent a hall, hire a band, and cook up a tasty spread of food for the partygoers.

A highlight one year was this amazing ham prepared by friend and coworker Peter Riegler. Ever since I had Peter’s ham, that’s the only way I cook mine.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

One bit of advice from Peter: “Do not sample the Jack Daniels Mix as I used to. You do get a headache!”

Peter Riegler’s Baked Ham

Ingredients:

--1 Bone-in Ham

--1 small bottle (8 oz) of SueBee Honey (or other honey)

--1 pint of Jack Daniels

--1 can of Sliced Pineapple, drained and juice reserved

--cloves

--1 to 2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper

--toothpicks

Directions:

--Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

--Score the fatty side of the ham in a criss-cross diamond pattern

--Poke a clove, stem side down, at every scored intersection of the diamond pattern.

--Using toothpicks, add slices of pineapple to the scored ham.

--Place ham in a roasting pan, then put in oven, scored side up. Bake 20 minutes per pound.

Meanwhile:

--Combine honey, pineapple juice, cayenne pepper and Jack Daniels.

--Using a baster, put some of the Jack Daniels mixture over the ham.

--30 minutes prior to ham being done, pour the rest of the mixture over the ham.

Note from Peter: I have in the past let the ham soak in the Jack Daniels mixture overnight, and then bake it in the oven. I save the mixture out of the soaking dish, baste once or twice while baking, and then pour the remainder over the ham 20 minutes prior to finish baking.

Happy Easter, everyone!

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