Cooking Cheap

I got a jar of Apple/Habanero Jelly for Christmas last year. What to do with it? How about a ham glaze for a cheap ham. In my experience the ham is pretty damn salty and glazes don’t really penetrate that much.

I have the ham, a Cooks shank half (99c/lib, 7.18lbs). Yes the aitch bone is a pain to deal with but the price is right since It’s mostly going to be sandwich fillings anyway. Still for $7, I’d better taste that jelly.

I opened the jar. The contents were separated and crystallized. I stirred it up and took a taste. Definitely sweet (like honey) and a bite of warmth that builds up to “that’s almost mostly hot”. It’s not something I would put on my bread or pancakes, but the glaze idea has promise. I put two tsp of the jelly in a small bowl and heated it in the the microwave for 15 seconds to get rid of the crystals (mostly) and then mixed in equal amounts of cheap dijon mustard and tasted. Oh yeah!. Doesn’t suck!! It’s better than the jelly alone or the mustard alone. A fine dipping sauce you can use anywhere you want a honey-mustard. Even if it never penetrates the ham as a glaze, it’ll work as a condiment for a sandwich. It’s still very sweet. Adding some cheap whole grain mustard didn’t help. Perhaps I’ll double the dijon to jelly ratio. Or add some soy sauce. Yikes! It’s a seriously addictive sauce.

Two parts pepper jelly, two parts dijon, 1 part soy sauce – more or less for desired consistency and taste.

It turns out you can taste some of the glaze in the ham – the habanero bite is toned down a lot but it exists. The sweet may have toned down the salt in the ham. In Mythbuster terminology, “it’s plausible”