Tag: green beans

Because of the world pandemic we are all living through, Easter is going to be very different this year. While there is immense grief in not being able to gather and be with our faith communities and family, we still have food.

We can still fill our individual kitchens with the smells of Easter and celebration, and, in my case, learn how to make ham from my mother Helen, which wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t separated right now.

TIP: If you can’t be with the people who usually cook the family meal for this Holy week, ask them for their recipes. When else than in this moment in history would we have the time to learn recipes that are important to our family traditions!

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A note on soda

As any typical Millennial who’s into the all-natural, local food movement and terrified of high-fructose corn syrup, I was real dubious when Helen told me that the ham glaze recipe called for either Coke or 7-up. I suspected that Coke was in this recipe because it had been written by the marketing department at Coca Cola.

So I looked it up, and it turns out, there is a solid reason for using soda in cooking. There are flavors used in soda that are hard to replicate and, apparently, Coke is a fantastic meat tenderizer. Helen said it would be fine to use an all-natural soda made with cane sugar. “What you want,” she said, “is the fizz and the sweetness, and if you have that, it’ll turn out just fine.”

A note on canned cream of chicken soup

Another 1960’s-church-basement staple shows up in the Cheesy Potatoes recipe: cream of chicken soup. For some of you, this will be wonderful and nostalgic. For others, you’ll want to skip this recipe because it has canned soup. While I am as nostalgic as they come, I have to admit to being guilty for giving a hard pass to any recipe that calls for cream-of-anything from a can.

But instead of continuing to be a bit picky, I researched why this is a thing. I discovered that canned soup in recipes is just a shorthand or time saver for adding the ingredients in the soup to your recipe. If you don’t want to use packaged food, you can easily add all those things to the recipe from scratch if thats your thing.

I opted for buying Amy’s Cream of Mushroom Soup for this recipe (they were out of Cream of Chicken) because they don’t add MSG to their soup.

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STEPS: EXPLAINED, WITH TIDBITS AND ADVICE

This recipe is for a 5-7 pound ham labeled “Fully Cooked” or “Ready to Eat.”

NOTE: If you have a ham that’s labeled “Cook Before Eating,” the cooking time will be a little different, and the internal temperature needs to get up to 160 degrees.

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. The low heat keeps the ham from drying out. Place your ham in a roasting pan or a 9×13 cake pan on a rack. It’s important that the ham is raised up off the surface of the pan to cook properly.

2. Cover your ham with a lid or foil if your ham is in a cake pan. Place on the middle rack of your oven. Set your timer for 20 minutes.

NOTE: Cooking time will depend on the size of your ham. Here is a guide: allow 18 to 24 minutes per pound. The ham will be ready when the internal temperature reaches 140°F. 

3. Now, we’ll prepare the ham glaze. In a medium sauce pan, combine 1 can (12 oz.) Coke, 7-up, or your favorite soda of choice, 1 cup orange juice, and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Stir to combine. Make sure you don’t stir away your carbonation.

Bring the glaze to a boil.

Once your glaze is simmering, taste it. If it’s too sweet, you can add water to dilute it a bit or if you want it more tangy, add some more orange juice. It will pick up lots of salt from the ham juices, so don’t worry if it’s mostly just sweet.

4. Once your ham timer goes off, pour the glaze over the ham, and return it to the oven.

NOTE: It’s best if the ham and the pan is heated up before you add the glaze. My ham was small, so I added the glaze after it had baked for 20 minutes, but if your ham is larger, it might take longer to heat up enough to put the glaze over it. Helen said that you should bake the ham with the glaze for at least an hour.

Once you add the glaze, you want to start basting your ham about every 15 minutes, so set another timer for that amount of time.

5. While your ham is cooking, we’ll start on the Cheesy Potatoes. The original recipe actually came from my mother-in-law, Joyce, from Iowa, though we’ve altered it slightly, like we do. 🙂

Chop up about 1/4 cup of onions into a very fine dice, pretty small so that they disappear into the dish.

6. Saute the onions with 4 tablespoons of butter in a large cast iron frying pan or any large pan over medium heat until the onions soften and become transparent.

7. Once your onions are ready, add 1 1/4 cup sour cream and 1 can of Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom soup to your pan. If you are using your own soup, add about 10-11 fluid oz.

Whisk to combine and bring to a simmer. This should take about 5 minutes.

At this point, your 15-minute ham timer probably went off. Take your ham out of the oven and baste it with the juice from the bottom of the pan. I don’t have a baster, so it was a little tricky with the rack in there. I tried this brush, but it was too annoying. What I ended up doing is tipping the pan so the juices ran to one side, and then I used a measuring cup to scoop up the glaze and pour it over the ham.

Cover the ham and put it back in the oven. Repeat this step every 15 minutes until the ham reaches an internal temp of 140-150 degrees. Since my ham was 3 pounds, I knew it was going to take somewhere around 1 to 1.5 hours, so once I hit the one hour mark, I started checking the temperature every time I took it out of the oven to baste it.

NOTE from Helen: “If it gets a little crazy in your kitchen like it does in mine and you forget to baste it a few times, the ham will still turn out fine! Don’t worry too much about it.”

8. Back to the cheese sauce! Once your sauce is bubbling like this, it’s time to add the cheese.

Whisk in 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese. If you want to get creative with your cheese choices, go for it!

9. Once your cheese is nicely combined into the sauce, it’s time to add the spices. Go easy on the salt at first in case your cheese or soup is on the salty side. I started with 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and 1 teaspoon garlic powder.

Once you mix in your spices, give it a taste. Adjust the salt, cheese, pepper, and garlic level to your taste. If you want more tang, add more sour cream. Once you like the way it tastes, check the consistency. If the sauce is too thick, it will be hard to combine with the potatoes. It should be like a thicker gravy, which I’m hoping you can kind of see from this picture of how it pours off this spoon.

Mine was a little thick, so I added about 3 tablespoons of milk.

Then it was just right!

10. Dump 2 pounds of hash brown potatoes in a large bowl. If you bought them frozen, make sure they are thawed out. Then, dump the cheese sauce over the hash browns.

Mix them gently until all the potatoes are coated evenly with the sauce.

11. Coat a 9×13 cake pan with cooking spray or your favorite oil on a paper towel if you are out of cooking spray like I am.

12. Spread the potatoes evenly in the cake pan. Try not to pack them down too much. I shook the pan back and forth to get them even, sort of like you do with brownie mix.

13. Cover the potatoes with foil and put them in the oven with your ham.

Normally, these potatoes would be baked in a 350 degree oven, but they will do fine with the ham at 325. Bake them for about an hour or until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

14. Now, it’s time to make the green beans.

NOTE from Helen:  “You often see these beans in the upper Midwest at any banquet meal. Plain green beans aren’t great unless they are right from the garden. There is nothing more boring than plain old ugly canned green beans, so I use frozen when I can’t get them fresh and add almonds and onions to add more flavor and color. These green beans are great with BBQ ribs, ham, or any of my fish dishes, which I think are complemented well by the green color.”

Clean your beans well and snap off the stems and any other dark spots. Fill a large pot with water and a dash of salt. Set it over high heat to boil.

15. In a small frying pan, sauté 1/2 cup diced onions and 1/4 cup almonds in 1 tablespoon olive oil until they are soft and translucent. 

16. Once the onions are soft, add 2 tablespoons butter and stir until melted. The butter is added later, so it doesn’t burn or disappear. We want there to be enough butter to coat the beans.

Once the butter is melted, take the pan off the heat, and set aside.

17. Once your water is boiling, add the beans. For frozen, bring them back to a boil and let them cook for 3 minutes. For fresh beans, boil for 5 minutes. 

18. Once your beans are done, drain them and add your almond, butter, and onion mixture plus 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder and 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt.

Mix until well combined and serve!

By now, your ham should be pretty close to being done. Once it’s at an internal temperature between 140-150 degrees, it’s ready to come out of the oven.

Let it rest on a cutting board, covered with foil, for 10 minutes before you cut it.

The absolutely best thing about this recipe is that you end up with all these yummy juices in the bottom of your pan, and unlike with a turkey or chicken, these juices are ready to serve as is. Though, you should taste it before you serve it, just in case something went wrong or it’s way too salty or something.

After your taste test, just pour the juices from the pan into a fussy little gravy boat like this one, because it’s Easter, and we’re celebrating!

Your potatoes should also be really close to done. Now is a good time, if you’d like, to take the foil off, and let them brown on top for about 15 minutes. Helen doesn’t do this, but I do! It’s your preference.

Once the potatoes temp at 160 or higher, they are done!

I had fresh parsley left over from the Chicken Soup recipe, so I chopped some up and sprinkled it on top for color. It’s ready to serve!

Once your ham has rested for about 10 minutes, it’s time to carve. My husband does that bit, so if you need carving tips, these people are smarter than me when it comes to ham carving!

Serve with some of the juices poured over the top and with our homemade mustard or apple sauce. Yum!

We at the farm wish you the best possible Easter during this strange time of seperation. We will get through this. Hang in there. Be well!