The Best Dutch Oven Ham EVARR

OK, well, at least it was the best Dutch Oven Ham I'VE ever made.

See, my Thanksgiving ham was great, but it wasn’t what I’d expected it to be in the end. The “glaze” mixed with the liquid that cooked out of the ham, and (since it was pretty runny to begin with) ended up more like a baste. It tasted great, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

So, I did it again tonight. I had some ham left over (remember I had to cut it up because it wouldn’t fit into my deep 12” Dutch oven?).

This time, I mixed the glaze to be more, well, glaze-y. More like a thick sauce or almost a paste. Another thing I did was let the ham cook a little bit to open up the slits I carved in the top. That way, when I put the glaze on, it would stay more in the meat, and not so much on the bottom of the dutch oven.

I also cooked it a bit hotter. This was primarily because it was cold out, but I think that browned and crisped the top much better.

Anyway, here it is.

Mark’s Honey Mustard Ham in the Dutch Oven

12” shallow Dutch Oven

14-15 coals above and below

• 1 ham, not so big, maybe 3 lbs or so
• Quite a few whole cloves
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• ~ 1/3 cup mustard
• ~ 1/2 cup honey
• Liberal shakes of:
• Grated Parmesan Cheese
• Coarse ground black pepper
• Celery salt
• Chopped, dried parsley

First, fire up some coals, and let them get white and hot.

I started by putting the ham in the dutch oven and checking to see that it was below the lid. Then I sliced the diagonals across the top, and put the cloves into the slices.

Once the coals were ready, I put the ham on.

Mixing the sauce was a bit tricky. I started with the soy sauce, and kept adding mustard and honey and stirring until it was thick. I went much heavier on the honey, but I was also pretty liberal with the mustard. The amounts shown here are approximate. Then, add the spices. The parmesan also helped thicken it a little.

Since it was cold outside, it took quite a while for the oven to get warmed up and begin cooking the ham. Once the slices on the top started to open up, I poured on the sauce. Then, every twenty minutes or so, I’d open it up, scoop some sauce up and pour it back over the meat. I could see it stayed on a lot more, and it really seeped into the slices.

I’ll bet it cooked for about an hour to an hour and a half

While that was cooking, I made Creamy Potatoes and Peas, from this recipe (minus the bacon).

When it was all about 20 minutes from done, Brendon came out with a can of crescent rolls he wanted to cook, so we put another oven on the coals (actually, we stacked it on top of the ham oven), and baked those. It was a great meal. The peas and potatoes were great, but the ham was the star. Wow!

Dutch Oven Pizza in the Rain!

Normally, I cook on Sundays. But on Fridays, I come home from work early. And on this particular Friday, I was kinda hankering to cook something on the back porch in the dutch ovens. As I drove home, I was a little bit deterred by the drops of rain on my windshield, and the “wikk, wikk, wikk” of my wipers. But I decided to go for it anyway.

I didn’t want to do anything complex, or fancy this time. I decided on pizza. It had been a really long time since I’d last done that. In fact, as I recall it was another rainy day, I believe, last March or so when I did it. Jodi’s not a big fan of pizza, so whenever I suggest it, she comes up with other ideas. But she’s working late tonight.

So, I stopped off and bought some supplies. Pepperoni, canadian bacon, mozzarella, olives…

The first thing I did, of course, was to mix up the crust so it would start to raise. Here’s the recipe I used: It’s actually the same one I posted a long time ago as “GIGO Pizza.” The fundamental concept of that recipe still holds true.

Dutch Oven Gigo Pizza

2x 12” dutch ovens
8 coals below
16 coals above

(In this case, because of the rain, I did the coals differently)

The Crust

• 1 ½ c. warm water
• 1 Tbsp yeast
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• ~4 c. Flour

I started by putting the yeast in some of the warm water to let it foam up. My experience has shown me that things tend to raise very slowly or poorly in my house (could be the altitude), so I do a little sprinkle extra of yeast.

Mix the other ingredients in a bowl, add the water and the yeast, and knead it into a ball. I also put in a little extra sugar to help the extra yeast along. Use the last bit of flour to adjust the smoothness of the dough. Not too dry, not to sticky. You might not use exactly 4 cups. I sprayd the bowl with cooking spray, put the dough ball in it, and then sprayed the top of the dough.

I set that aside to raise.

After about a half hour to 45 minutes of twiddling my thumbs and watching lame TV on the Disney Channel (my kids are home), I went outside and lit up about 50 coals or so. At that moment, it wasn’t raining, so I was doing OK. Once the coals were glowing, I scattered them into to groups and put two 12” dutch ovens on. I split a pound of mild Italian sausage between the two ovens, and let that start to brown. Pretty soon it was drizzling, so I put lids on the ovens.

In the meantime, I mixed up the sauce.

• 1 small can tomato sauce
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp black pepper
• 1 Tbsp celery salt
• 1 Tbsp oregano (maybe a little more)

Actually, those amounts on the spices are estimates. Just go until it smells rich!

My timing was good. Just about the time that the sausage was browned, the dough had risen enough. I brought the dutch ovens inside and pulled the sausage out. In the bottom of each oven, now well greased from the sausage, I added some minced garlic (about a tablespoon), a bit of butter (about a tablespoon), and some generous shakings of celery salt.

I took the now-raised ball of dough, split it in half, and formed one half into the pizza flat. That went into the bottom of one dutch oven. The other half of the dough did the other dutch oven.

Onto that went the sauce and a thin layer of cheeses. I had bought one of those shredded Italian cheese blends, with mozzarella, provolone, parmesan, and romano. Mmmmmm….

Then, I piled on the food! The sausage, the Canadian bacon, the pepperoni, fresh sliced onions, olives! And finally, the whole thing gets layered under a pretty thick blanket of the cheeses. I was doing this all as fast as I could, since the coals were outside getting rained on.

So, I took the ovens back outside. I have this big round metal hood that’s designed to shelter dutch ovens, and so I decided to use it. I put about 12 coals in a circle, and put an oven on top of that. Then, I put about 14 coals on top of that oven. I stacked the second oven on top, and put about 14 coals on top of that one. Then the whole thing went under the hood.

After about 15 minutes, I unstacked them, turned them, and restacked them to distribute the heat more evenly. It was raining pretty steadily, but not heavily the whole time. Finally, after about 35 minutes, it was done! ...And it was snowing!

Dang yummy pizza, and very filling! There’ll be leftovers for lunches!

Dutch Oven Sourdough Bread, The Adventure, Part III

I am so glad I wasn’t cooking for company last night. It was one of those days where it tastes OK, but it just didn’t come out quite right.

I did the sourdough bread. It cooked OK, but not great. Not fluffy like I wanted, even a tich doughy. For the dinner part, I made the salmon that I’d done at the cookoff last June. It wasn’t done right, either.

I think it has a lot to do with the weather. It was cold yesterday, and I thought I had compensated for that with some extra coals. But apparently it wasn’t enough extra coals. The rice and the veggies weren’t fully cooked, and the bread just didn’t work.

Well, and the bread took three hours to raise the first time, to get to the “double in bulk” part. And then, I’m supposed to let it raise again to “double in bulk”, but at that point I already had the salmon on the coals, and I wasn’t too interested in waiting another three hours. And, in the end, it didn’t really taste that sour. It had a good white bread taste, but not the tang I was hoping for.

So, I guess I’ll try again later. When I do, I’ll post the recipe and results.