Hi there!
Last week I mentioned that I would be devoting the week to money saving with meat, off the beaten track from my usual blogging!
Now I don’t know about you but I am poor and frankly I’m tired of rich people telling me how to save money!
Money saving seems to be the new “in”, fashionable, quaint thing to do amongst the well off and while it may be fun for them driving to each supermarket (using £4 worth of petrol) to get a 30p saving on the last, for people in real trouble with money such as myself, cooking is a much needed skill.
When cooking well and cheap, you shouldn’t even notice because there shouldn’t be a lack of flavor.
The key, really, is create food you and your family can enjoy, even on a tight budget.
We all know how the mind works and if you’re feeling hard done by and miserable about what you’re eating and your family is too, you’re bound to give up!
This week I will be showing you delicious dinners with a gammon joint!
Now, I admit I was very lucky with the gammon I brought.
I spotted it in the reduced section of a supermarket at about £4.
I’m certainly not going to suggest you can just pop in to your local and find the same, though do look out!
Usually it would have cost around £15 for 2 to 3 kilos.
For the amount of meals for two that it will make, it is still well worth buying!
All of the meals I will show you are only using this one joint and we also enjoyed a few sneaky gammon sandwiches and a gammon omelet on the side!
So, lets start the week off with a delicious Sunday roast!
I served my gammon joint with fan-tailed roast potatoes and roast carrots cooked in the gammon fat, buttered peas and home-made gravy!
Since most of you can roast vegetables, I’ll just let you know how to cook the joint and make the gravy!
Slow Roasted Gammon Joint & Home-made Gravy
Serves: 2 all week!
Ingredients
1 3-4 kilo gammon joint
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Boiling water
Method
Preheat the oven to 220oc.
To start, place the joint in a large roasting tray skin side up and wipe to dry the skin with a disposable cloth.
With a clean Stanley knife score the skin horizontally and vertically.
Drizzle over the vegetable oil and massage it in all over the meat and skin.
Freshly grind pepper into a small bowl for ease, then massage it all over, don’t use salt for a gammon joint as it is already very salty, add salt if it is regular pork.
Place the pork joint, skin side up, in the oven for 45 minutes then turn the oven down to 130oc and cook the joint for 3-4 hours, until it is fall apart tender.
Rest the roast on a plate for about 30 minutes to maximise juiciness.
For the gravy, separate (and keep for flavourful frying!) the pure fat from the brown, meaty bits stuck in the roasting pan.
Place the roasting pan on a high heat and add in boiling water to create the thickness of gravy you desire, scraping up all the bits from the pan.
Place the gravy through a sieve to make the gravy smooth without meat bits throughout and serve!
WAIT WAIT WAIT!!!
Don’t go yet, before you sink your teeth into that sumptuous meat you may want to try this.
Now, you may not have heard of pork scratchings if you don’t live in England but you need to.
I currently live in the home of pork scratchings in the middle of England and we do so love them, check out our pork scratching taste test!
Scratchings, if you are wondering, are basically that delicious crispy fatty layer of skin you get on pork, cut up, fried and seasoned.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the actual seasoning used in official scratchings but this tastes pretty darned good regardless.
Double Cooked Pork Crackling
If you can stay away from eating that juicy crackling covering your gammon joint remove it before carving and place it under a hot grill on both sides until extra crispy.
Leave it to cool, break it into pieces (everyone has a toffee hammer right?) and you have yourself a rudimentary pork scratching!
So now we’re done, when fully cooled, place whatever is left of your pork into the fridge covered in cling film and wait until tomorrow for more delicious ways to enjoy our pig feast.
Until then!
