Ginger Beer Christmas Ham

Ingredients

For the glaze:

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Move the baking rack towards the bottom position of the oven.
2. Combine all the glaze ingredients in a medium pot, bring it to a boil and reduce the glaze to a syrup, but adjust to personal taste.
3. While the syrup is reducing, remove most of the skin from the ham. Find a corner where you can see the skin and fat layer, and with your finger, tug between the layer to help start the separation. Continue to peel back the skin from the fat. Leave the skin on where it’s close to the shank at the end of the ham – you can use a knife to mark a line so the skin will stop peeling from the cut. If you are using a different cut of the ham leg you can remove all the skin.
4. Score the fat layer lightly, in straight lines around the ham, make each score about 1cm apart, and finish scoring the entire surface where there is fat coverage. You can brush some syrup on top so you can see the scoring.
5. Wrap the shank end of the ham with baking paper and foil. Using a pastry brush, coat the ham generously with syrup and place it on a heavy baking tray lined with baking paper.
6. Bake the ham until golden, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Repeat the bushing every 15 min, and turn the tray around halfway through baking.
7. If you prefer you can simply swap ginger beer for other beverages such as cola, 7-up, sprite, sarsaparilla, rootbeer