When cooking a Holiday ham is as easy as cutting off the wrapper and turning on the oven, you need something like glaze to put an original gloss on the holiday meal.
Like basting, glazes help seal in food's moisture. Yet glazes do far more.
They give a thin, almost lacquered shine to food while adding color, aroma and flavor. The taste is little more than skin deep but you get a neat textural element: the bits of glaze darkened and caramelized by the oven's heat - make up for that.
In these days of mass-produced, ready-cooked, spiral-sliced hams, glazes offer an opportunity for you to personalize the meat, adding your own flavor spin to make the ham uniquely your own.
Kentucky Bourbon Glaze
Note: Add more Tabasco if you like things hot. One tablespoon, for example, packs a wallop.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup catsup
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1 Tsp. Tabasco
- 1 Tbsp. onion salt
- 1 Tbps. whole mustard seed
- 1 Tbps. chili powder
- 1/4 cup Kentucky bourbon
Instructions:
Mix all ingredients together in a medium bowl.
