Honey Ham vs. Watermelon "Ham"

you know usually when you cook you cook stuff that you like and it's kind of funny i don't like ham that much but today we're gonna make ham good now yeah i get it a lot of people probably really do like ham and a really nice honey glazed ham it's tasty but i just feel like oftentimes i have it and it's just kind of underwhelming one of those big spiral cut hams just starts to taste kind of boring when you get to that center piece for me maybe it also just has a bit of a weird texture too i don't really know but whether you already love ham or not this video is for you because we're going to make it good either way and the best part about this video is that we've had a lot of requests for vegan stuff lately so we've got bonus content today on top of a regular delicious ham that's super super easy to make given that it's really hard to buy an uncooked ham we're actually just gonna start with a cured smoked type ham and build off the top of that with some really simple things to make this thing insane we're also going to make a watermelon ham yeah i know it sounds crazy but believe it or not with a couple simple little tweaks to a watermelon you can actually make it taste and carve just like me so if you want to go a slightly different route than a big old traditional ham watermelon might be the way to go so let's go ham as you can see here i've gotten a watermelon that's about the same size as our ham now like i said you know i like making everything from scratch right but it's really hard to find this cut of ham that's uncooked because most people don't want to make that from scratch it's so much easier to take it already cured and smoked like this so i guess that'll make it a lot easier for all of you the other thing i'll say is huge props to the guy at the market because they didn't have any watermelons out and he very kindly went to the back and got this baby out for me i always test my watermelons by knocking all around them and seeing how much vibration there is through the whole thing that usually gives me a really good sense of whether it's a really crispy watermelon as opposed to one of those nasty mealy watermelons you can get but again what i like is that these are about the same size so it'll be nice for us to be able to compare these at the end because this one's going to take a little bit more time i'm going to start with the watermelon to start we're going to cut this bad boy open and when doing that we want to make sure we leave it all in one big piece so that it's a ham to start i'm going to take off both ends i always love cutting into a watermelon it just reminds me of summer once you've done that sit it on the flat side and then shave down along the outside of your watermelon but keep in mind you don't want to take off too much of the red part slowly rotate your melon as you continue to carve down curving around the outside of the melon this is essentially the same process that you'd follow for doing this to a grapefruit and it's actually even easier when it's something bigger i can already tell with this one that it's a very very crispy melon and for me it's always exciting when i know i've picked out a good one once you've gotten off those large outer pieces take a pause for a second you don't actually have to throw out all these scraps in fact pickled watermelon rind is not only beautiful but really unique and tasty if you can pull it off it's also just super simple to make so save these if you feel like it once your watermelon just has these white parts left shave all those off until you pretty much have a fully red watermelon you just don't really want to leave any of those white rhine parts on here and this will look more like a ham if it has that reddish almost raw ham color unfortunately it looks like i got a little bit of a mealy part of my watermelon here but that's fine you want to make sure your watermelon has a nice place to sit resting downwards so i'm going to chop straight through this part to give it a flat surface to sit on that way it's really easy for me to work with my ham just like this at this point we want to score our watermelon just a little bit we're going to do the exact same thing to our ham in addition to giving a nice texture and look this actually gives us more surface area to rub those spices in and for the actual browning in the oven i'll come all the way across the whole melon just going slightly in first going this way and after that i'll do the same thing coming across eventually this should give me a bunch of nice cube shapes on my watermelon and while we may not see these super well right now they'll become a lot more pronounced when we go to finally cook this you can probably already see the pattern starting to take shape and again as this cooks it'll lose some water tighten up and really begin to look like a ham now it's time to get those seasonings ready first we'll toast off a few of our seasonings so into a dry pan i'll do some sun-dried chipotle chilis with the seeds taken out a little bit of sugar which again toasting it's not going to do all that much but i'll just combine them all at once a little bit of coconut sugar a sprinkle of garlic powder a sprinkle of chili powder a bit of smoked paprika a little onion powder some dried orange peel and just a few whole cloves i'm not gonna toast this for too long because the sugar will eventually start melting but once this gets nice and aromatic i can bring it off the heat at this point i'm gonna pour all my seasonings here into a spice grinder because i want this all in equally fine consistency whereby we can rub it right into our watermelon then i'll just pulse this up until it's a nice fine powder now i'm gonna take this off and you can see that we have a perfectly smooth spice to work with that right there is an awesome spice blend so let's get rubbing at this point we're going to give this beauty a nice massage i know it's hard right now but we also want to work it into the crevices so i'm going to slowly pour my blend over my watermelon here and just gently work that in i think that chipotle chili's getting in my lugs we really want to make sure we hit every nook and cranny here and again try to work between those little cuts that we've made that'll just get more and more flavor into our melon if it helps flip the watermelon over and sprinkle the bottom with our seasoning as well i know this might look a little weird and it may be really hard to think about doing this to such a sweet watery fruit that we all know and love but hey crazy things like this are how amazing food ideas are made my favorite dessert the lava cake was a complete accident so if this works out we'll just call it a happy accident once you've given your whole watermelon the rub we're then going to go on with some salt all over the whole thing this is actually a really important step because the salt is going to be what draws out the moisture to make this almost a little bit meaty don't really worry about over salting this thing here i mean you don't want to go too crazy but you also want to make sure there's enough salt that a ton of moisture will be drawn from this not to get nerdy on anyone but salt will be drawing the moisture out of this through the process of osmosis and given how much water there is in a watermelon this thing is not going to get meaty without some salt now normally you'd want to rest this in the fridge for about 12 hours or overnight but i know nobody wants to do that so i'm going to try to speed it up for you we're going to place this in the oven at about 200 fahrenheit until we slowly start to see some of the space between the cuts we've made this will hopefully help speed up that process a little bit that we'd be doing in the fridge overnight by dehydrating our watermelon we'll be right back to start with our real ham not that i'm discrediting our watermelon ham which is gonna be epic i'm gonna go in with a bunch of brown sugar a little bit of orange peel some maple crumble some old style mustard then some dijon mustard a tiny bit of light corn syrup to get that extra crackle on our glaze a touch of worcestershire sauce a little bit of rice wine vinegar a nice little sprinkle of honey but not too much just enough for that flavor a tiny bit of molasses since i've always thought it gives a really nice burnt sort of tanginess flavor or tangy flavor i should say a touch of chili powder a touch of smoked paprika a little onion and garlic powder and some fresh cracked pepper we definitely don't need salt because you already have more than enough salt in that ham that you've bought now we'll whisk this up you can definitely play around with your amounts here and make sure you get the right consistency but this right here is perfect you want to make sure it's thick enough that it sticks to the ham but also thin enough that you can actually paint it on now we set this aside it's finally time to open up our ham and i will say this thing smells pretty dang good already so just wait until you see what we do to it i always like these cuts here and i'm not exactly sure why but you can do this exact same process with any ham you get it doesn't really matter what it looks like or what shape it has the real thing you want to pay attention to is the weight and what i have here is about 11 pounds my lucky number to start we're going to score the whole ham we actually want to make nice squares across the whole thing and this will give us a really nice beautiful cooked surface when it's complete giving that additional surface area for extra browning when you go to cook it is really really important once we go across the way that we've just gone horizontally we'll do the same exact thing coming upwards just be careful not to cut yourself here but trust me when i say that this part right here is worth the extra few minutes of effort especially given how long you're gonna then cook this thing now i don't stop just there complete this exact process all over your entire ham trust me your guests are gonna love you now that i've finally scored around the whole thing i'm gonna finish making all those cubes by bringing my knife vertically up and going around the whole entire ham i don't know why but i just like cutting it this way so much better than the other ways i've seen and if you're very artistically inclined you can do it sort of sideways like i am to get a really cool pattern when you do this scoring process some of these bits might fall off but that's okay after all it is fully cooked so if you want a little snack you try it out as you can see now here i have all these really nice squares that'll turn nice and crispy with my glaze so we can now coat this thing and get it ready to bake we also want to paint this whole thing in brown butter so i'm just gonna let one whole stick melt down until i get that nice brown nuttiness one trick i often use to get a little bit more of that brown in the butter is adding a little bit of milk powder which is essentially the part in butter that actually browns so this basically just gives you more of that brown butter flavor once you have a browned nutty and frothy butter take that off the heat brown butter can over brown really quickly so make sure you don't cook it any longer than it has to into our large baking tray we're gonna toss in a handful of star anise pods i think i've spoken about these with you before but essentially it's a spice that smells just like licorice and i'm not the biggest licorice fan in the world either but it gives a really great flavor to any holiday meals we're also going to toss in a handful of whole cloves normally you might see cloves stuck into the edge around your whole ham but i don't really like doing that because you can lose them inside there and it is not fun to bite down on one of these things next i'm going to take the rind of a lemon and layer that into the bottom of our tray because again that'll give us a nice citrusy flavor here we can also do the same exact thing with an orange again just a nice extra citrus flavor then i'll squeeze both of these things in here as well to finish i'll cover all this up which is a small layer of water which will essentially let things steam a little bit and put all that flavor into the oven if you want to you can add some chips of any wood you like i'm going to add in some hickory chips here and to be honest i'm not sure how much flavor that's gonna give but it can't hurt again make sure you're not adding salt i can promise you right now that the ham you bought probably already has way too much salt we'll fit our roasting rack over these aromatics and then i'll place down my beautiful ham for our first step we're gonna paint our brown butter all over this beautiful ham to me brown butter makes literally everything in the entire world better and if i'm stuck on an island it's one of those five ingredients i can't live without so why not give that nuttiness and that amazing buttery flavor to our ham here if possible we're going to really work that into the crevices too don't get too rough with your hand because we don't want to be breaking anything here but if you can try to really wedge that in between those little bumps because that's going to make for a much better experience when you go to eat it if you feel so inclined get in there with your hands and fingers a little bit too that can help to open up some of these cracks and then it's a whole lot easier to wedge that butter in now for the thicker lacquer that we put on here this glaze won't spread quite as easily as our brown butter but it's really supposed to kind of stick on there and give us that nice candied layer on the outside of our ham so if your glaze sticks the way that mine is right here give yourself a pat on the back because you've done a really nice job if you start painting and immediately you notice that the consistency isn't right don't worry maybe just add a little bit more brown sugar in there or do something to help thicken it up a little bit we also don't want to be neglecting the other side of our ham so really make sure that you get under it too if you want you can also save a little bit of your marinade here and after the ham is baked for a little while take it out and give it another glaze a lot of people will do this because once it starts to tighten up when it cooks you'll have easier access to all the crevices i'm talking about so it's not a totally bad strategy to cook it a little bit first and then glaze once your watermelon has shrunk down quite a bit we're ready to crank up the heat on it now again you could have taken the other route and left it overnight in the fridge but you can see that it's already started to dry out i'm not sure if you can tell but there's a ton of water at the bottom of my pan and i'm actually gonna dump that out before i put it back in the oven now i'm gonna bring this up to about 350 and let it cook for about an hour or so to let a bunch more juice come off with the idea being that we're going to dry this thing out a little bit more to make it more meaty then we can put on our glaze give it a broil and slice now that this is ready to bake we're going to toss this in the oven at 350 fahrenheit for a half an hour then we'll take it out glaze it again and repeat that process several times until this thing is golden brown and beautiful because this is already cooked we're really just trying to get it so that there's a crust on the outside and the internal temperature is nice and warm and at 350 it should take about 15 to 20 minutes per pound to warm this thing up for now we'll let this go for half an hour to make our glaze for our watermelon we're gonna start with just a little bit of oil and then i'll go in with a few tablespoons of garlic and grate in a bunch of fresh ginger once that's nice and sizzly let's add some agave some fresh squeezed orange juice a little bit of zest from one of my oranges then we'll go in with some brown sugar or coconut sugar some dijon mustard some vegan worcestershire sauce because the regular one has anchovies and at this point we're gonna let this cook down until it's a nice thick glaze it should take about 10 minutes or so once that big beautiful ham comes out of the oven we're gonna coat that baby with our glaze again and because we're getting some really dark browning on some of these spots you can turn down the heat just a tad if you don't want it to get too much color at this point as you can see now we glaze it again because all this will go right into those beautiful crevices and you can start lifting that glaze up from the bottom of the pan and putting that up onto the ham at this point be sure to really paint that entire ham in that glaze we don't want to miss a single spot once we've coated this entire ham in our glaze once again we can place it back in the oven and cook it until it reaches that nice internal temperature we're looking for now i'll place this thing back in the oven until it really starts to get that hard crispy exterior make sure at the end you crank up the heat just a little bit to really get that crust now we can take our armadillo looking melon out of the oven and start to paint on that beautiful glaze we have it's really hard for me to explain but this part starts to feel a little bit like skin these little pieces on the edge of the watermelon loosen up a bunch and that's when you start to get that meaty texture that i was talking about when we paint the watermelon we'll make sure that we really get into all those cracks that we have on here we want a nice beautiful glaze that'll really stick to our melon and give a nice crust on the outside we want this thing to be smoky from that chili powder and also have a nice shine to it when it's done cooking it should be beautiful golden brown almost like a creme brulee i'll pour the rest of that thick glaze over this melon really making sure to brush all the way under it as well and then this bad boy is going to broil in the oven for about five to ten minutes at max temp to really get it crispy we'll be right back and here we are the coolest thing here is that this is starting to look really similar to my watermelon or the other way around but i love how much crackling there is on there we've got this crispy exterior right now that's gonna pair perfectly with that softer more meaty interior i can keep basting this thing and get more flavor in here but as far as i'm concerned this thing's ready to carve and now finally our watermelon is complete this thing actually looks gorgeous but there's something i'm much more excited about when it comes to this thing right here cutting it open the time that you've all been waiting for has come we're gonna compare the traditional ham with the watermelon ham let's get carving now as you can see this beauty right here is absolutely dripping wet and no i'm not gonna pat myself on the back for getting this thing to be nice and juicy because a watermelon is pretty much entirely water so that's not a huge accomplishment on my part in fact i was trying to take water out of this thing it's definitely got some nice toasting and a nice crust on the top here but i'm just really excited to cut this thing open i don't want to talk about it anymore let's just slice it open wow whoa this is crazy huh to start i'm gonna put some of that liquid that we had come off the watermelon back onto the watermelon i know that may sound silly but we really want to marinate it in its own juices here and we put a lot of seasoning into this stuff and now it's time to carve off some of this ham certainly having a bone in the middle of this thing doesn't make it easy but to start don't you agree it's funny how similar these two ended up looking i mean seriously we actually got two things that looked quite similar to one another obviously we have much more browning on here and this to me looks far more appetizing first i want you to hear that crispiness we were not messing around with this here but it's time to slice in and give this a try like i said this was already all pre-cooked so there's absolutely no need to worry about that when carving into your hand and also keep in mind you're gonna have to cut around the bone so for now i'm just gonna take a few of these pieces that come right off easily for me it also might be hard to tell but this is extraordinarily juicy yet again i cannot describe to you how incredible these bits are right here i'll pick off a few and set them aside for a crunch test too i want to make sure that that's crispy i'm going to put this on my plate and now i want to taste these side by side once you carve in i will say they look quite different but the watermelon is notably much much juicier let's try it out let me start by saying this i'm intrigued the closer to the outside of the watermelon you get the more it actually does taste like meat but in my opinion there's a caveat it doesn't just taste like any meat it tastes like raw meat almost like raw fish instead of having that really crispy crunch that a watermelon traditionally has this is much chewier it's really really soft the seasoning is fantastic because it's really easy to season something like a watermelon all that juice sucks every seasoning you put on there right in so if you want to make this with a bit more effort and give it more time put it in the oven and cook it a little bit slower or rest in the fridge for a while let off a bunch of that water you can take this thing as seriously as you want and you can make this taste pretty darn close to me the other thing is if you've ever had a dry hunk of ham this is not gonna be that no matter what you do this is a warm sweet well-seasoned melt-in-your-mouth piece of meat and speaking of meat let's try the real one i'm gonna start here with a crunch test from a random piece off the outside of my meat this reminds me of some candy out there but i don't know what it is one of those candies that turns from crunchy to chewy and lasts for a little bit so you can really enjoy it that exterior that we have on this ham is pure goodness the glaze that's on here is heavenly it's the sugary chewy unbelievably good glaze and i urge you to make that whether it's for this or the watermelon now i'm just gonna go for it here and take a big bite out of the end that's an eight plus ham granted we didn't make this thing from scratch but this right here brings that pretty basic cooked ham to 110 percent ham now i get it watermelon and ham totally different these are both the same in one important way they are addictingly good they don't take that much effort and they both have this very easy to put together glaze put on top of them and you can be creative in your kitchen with the ingredients that you have there now i'm not gonna lie and say that i'm equally excited between the two and i wouldn't be sure which one to choose over the other because there's something about this traditional ham that's just impossible to talk but they are both so freaking good go ahead and give one of these a shot i know it might sound weird to cook watermelon like this but it's pretty tasty and in the meantime thanks for watching the video you know i always appreciate it smack that subscribe button and the notifications icon please toss the video a like and comment what you want next i really do read through your comments and i appreciate when you take the time to write something now i got a choice to make do i eat the watermelon or the ham see you soon

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 1,808,933

Rating: 4.9111567 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: wLwk0qZ1gYM

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021