Christmas "Ham": An Inaugural Post

Well, I thought I ought to start off this blog with a solid post, so I present to you my attempt at a Christmas ham that I cooked while I was on Winter break last month visiting home.

I decided to do a ham because I had done a "turkey" for Thanksgiving and wanted to try something new (sorry, I don't really have pictures of it so a turkey post will have to wait until next time I make one. In the meantime there are tons of great seitan turkey recipes out there on the vast internet.). Previous to this my only attempts had been poultry (mostly chicken) and beef, and I really wanted to try to capture the, how does one say, hammy-ness of a ham. My first step in preparing a new seitan recipe is to do some research as to what people are doing to the meats I'm trying to replicate. I sifted through a lot of ham recipes and came up with three very important ingredients: nutmeg, allspice, and clove. I figured that with the right amount of saltiness combined with these three spices, I could pretty well replicate the flavor of a ham. Well, that and a lot of brown sugar.

My personal favorite method to making any kind of roast-like seitan is to simmer in a slow-cooker for several hours. I feel that this is a good way to produce a tender juiciness all the way through. Firstly I start with the broth. One thing you should know about me is that recipes aren't for me. Don't get me wrong-- they're very useful and for some people crucial, but when I'm cooking I like to have a degree of freedom and flexibility (as I like to say, I enjoy cooking by intuition). As such I actually don't know how much of most of the ingredients I used. I'll try to give an approximation whenever I can, though.

For the base of the broth I used Better Than Boullion's No Chicken flavor. I first learned about this stuff from Jenn Shagrin's fantastic cookbook "Veganize This!" and will use it whenever I want to make something really delicious. They also make No Beef broth, but I went with the No Chicken because I thought it would more easily adapt to a ham flavor (that, and my mom happened to have a jar of it on hand anyway). I made about seven cups of it because I was making a pretty big roast and my mom's crock pot is rather large. I also tend to use slightly more of the Better Than Boullion per cup of water than the directions call for, because the more flavorful the broth, the more flavorful the seitan. I then put in some dried onions (because you can never go wrong with onion), a few teaspoons of various spices (nutmeg, allspice, clove, plus others that sounded good at the time, I'm sure), a nice pour of maple syrup, a few tablespoons of brown sugar, and a few tablespoons of liquid smoke (oh-so necessary). Add a couple of bay leaves for good measure and we're in business!

Next step is to mix up the broth for the wheat gluten dough. Some people use water but I'm completely mystified as to why; I find that the majority of the flavor comes from the way you season your dough. The seasoning for the simmering broth is mostly just to make sure you don't lose any of the flavor in cooking.

Here you can see I've mixed up four cups of Better Than Boullion (you definitely want this on the strong side) with some Bragg's Liquid Aminos (soy sauce works just as well, but I like Bragg's a little better and had it on hand), the aforementioned spices, brown sugar, and some more liquid smoke (as well as some red food coloring to try to make it a bit pink). This is the stage where you really decide what your seitan is going to taste like, so have fun! This bit I pretty much just make up off the top of my head. I heat up my water in the microwave before adding in the flavorings because it seems to dissolve better that way. This is why I make the broth before mixing up my dry ingredients-- I want to let the broth cool for a bit so I don't burn myself (although, really, I end up burning myself anyway because I am impatient).

Here you can see my vital wheat gluten (four cups), to which I usually add a little (a few tablespoons) all-purpose or bread flour. This is a way to keep your seitan from being too tough and chewy. That can be a good thing sometimes, such as when you're trying to recreate beef, but I wanted my ham to be nice and tender. There on top of the flours you can see my spices-- all stuff mentioned before, as well as some ground sea salt. Table salt will do, but I like using a salt grinder. I then use my whisk to mix it all up until it seems nicely blended. At this point, DO NOT just dump your broth into the dry mixture. This is a terrible thing which I sometimes forget not to do, and then I cry and cry. What you want to do is make a little well in the center of your dry ingredients and pour the broth in there. If you don't do it this way, there's a good chance that you will end up with dry pockets in the dough as you knead it which, if not attended to, will turn into unpleasantly tough areas in your seitan. Yuck! This, sadly, is what I did to my ham dough. It took me a lot of working to get all the dry pockets out (much kneading and soaking and crying). So, pour the liquid into the middle, then carefully begin to knead it all together into a spongy dough.

Now, isn't that ugly? Seitan dough looks pretty gross (especially with red food coloring, I found), but this is the way it's supposed to be. I ended up having some left over liquid, which isn't a problem. In fact, since I had to deal with dry pockets in my dough, it came in handy for soaking them. At this point, if I have time, I like to let the dough sit and deal with itself for a little while. I find this can minimize the amount of air bubbles in the dough, and generally make it more well behaved. After it settled for a while I kneaded it a few minutes more for good measure, then shaped it into a log and wrapped it in cheesecloth. This helps it to retain its shape as it cooks.

Next, I put my ham into the crock pot and wish it luck! I put the cooker on low heat and left it for several hours. It's okay that the broth doesn't cover the whole thing, because we can just turn it. I turned it sometime late that night, and it smelled fantastic.

This is when I turned it. It's not very clear here, but it had swelled quite a bit by this point. I left it for the rest of the night.

Steamy goodness. I took it out of the pot the next morning (after opening presents, of course) and let it cool and drain a bit in a colander.

After peeling off the cheesecloth. It ended up baking a little bit on the parts that were out of the liquid, but this was okay because I planned on baking it a little anyway. Some cheesecloth fibers stuck to it, but this wasn't noticeable after glazing. I ended up using Top Secret Recipes "Honeybaked Ham Glaze," which I altered slightly. I'd tell you what it is, but I think if I did they might put a hit out on me. That, or sue me or something.

And here it is! Scored and glazed, and put under the broiler for a little while.  The glaze was fantastic, and I'd call the ham an overall success. I think it may have been a little too tough, and probably could have been more flavorful. But, for a first attempt, rather yummy! For sides we had garlic sauteed asparagus, roasted sweet potatoes, vegan "cheesy" biscuits, and homemade (purple) mashed potatoes with some gravy I made with the leftover broth. Interesting, but a bit sugary for a gravy.

For now, I'm gonna go make a veggie steak dinner. I promise to document.