Homemade Ham, the Star of our Noche Buena

Noche Buena is Spanish for “good night”.In the Philippines, it is a feast with the entire family in the evening of December 24,usually at midnight. It is done after the entire family has attended the late evening Christmas eve mass.

Of course, Noche Buena won’t be the same without its star– the Christmas Ham. You can usually buy ham at the grocery and everywhere else during the season but I prefer my mom’s homemade ham because it’s very tasty.My mom has been making ham for , I think, more than 30 years now. When we were still selling meat at the local wet market, most of our customers or “suki” would order ham during the Christmas season and I remember my mom making Ham in big batches. It was a hit! Of course, I asked her for the recipe.

Ingredients:
Pork Shoulder [kasim], big chunk around 1kg
4 tbsp white sugar
1½ tbsp salt
¼ tsp praque powder
¼ tsp msg
1 cup of local Gin
2-3 cups Pineapple Juice
Brown Sugar

Direction:

• Combine white sugar, salt, praque, msg and gin in a bowl. Mix well.
• Using a knife make incisions in your block of meat.
• The sugar and salt won’t be dissolved in the gin right away.Rub your sugar-salt mixture outside the meat and put some in the incisions that you made,as well.
• Set aside in the fridge for 15 days or more with the marinade, taking it out every other day to put some of the marinade inside the incisions.
• After, 15 days, take it out of the fridge and boil your ham in Pineapple juice for 25 minutes.
• Let it cool for a few minutes then put ham in a baking tray, fat side up.
• Put brown sugar on top of it, enough to cover the fat. Roast in an oven at 220° until nice and brown and the sugar on top has melted into glaze.

This is my first entry. Thank you for welcoming me at the Kulinarya Cooking Club.

Kulinarya was started by a group of Filipino foodies living in Sydney, who are passionate about the Filipino culture and its colourful cuisine. Each month we will showcase a new dish along with their family recipes. By sharing these recipes, we hope you find the same passion and love for Filipino Food as we do