Pineapple Ham (Spiral Ham Recipe) - The Cookie Rookie® (2024)

FAQs

What happens when you put fresh pineapple on ham? ›

If placed on the ham during the baking process, the ham will turn to a clay-like mush. "Pineapple belongs on ham," says Towers, "but you have to cook it first or used canned. If you use fresh pineapple it will turn the meat to play dough mush. Bromelain cooks out of the fruit during the canning or cooking process."

I soak mine in ginger ale overnight and find it removes a good portion of the salt.

Soaking Ham before Cooking

Soaking a salt cured country ham before cooking is believed to make the ham less salty.

Now for the real issue with cooking a spiral-cut ham: All of those convenient slices, those multiple cuts in the meat, are points through which the ham juices can leach out as you heat it to 140°F, potentially leaving you with dry results. You have to cook it carefully to keep the moisture from escaping.

Bromelain cuts the protein chains and keeps the product from jelling properly. What can you do to overcome this challenge? Try using canned pineapple in place of fresh fruit. Canned pineapple has been heated causing the bromelain to be less reactive.

Gelatine is derived from the protein collagen. The enzyme in fresh* pineapple, bromelin, breaks down collagen and this prevents the jelly from setting. If the shape of the active site is distorted, the enzyme can no longer function and is described as being denatured.

Cured country hams can be cooked with sweet beverages, like ginger ale, champagne, or, in this case, Coca-Cola, to counteract their salty character.

Reducing the Salt

Place the ham in a large bowl or pot and pour cold water over it until it is covered. Let it soak in the fridge overnight to give time for the salt to soak out into the water. Remove the ham from the water and pat it dry with a paper towel before heating it in the oven.

Country ham is a variety of heavily salted ham preserved by curing and often but not always by smoking, associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States.

What to do if your ham is too salty? ›

Place ham, left in plastic covering from company (and netting to make handling easier), into large container. Cover with hot tap water. Let sit for 45 minutes. Empty water and refill with hot tap water for another 45 minutes.

Smoked Ham, Uncooked

If you're cooking a smoked ham that has not been pre-cooked (oftentimes labeled as "cook before eating"), you'll need to cook it at 325 degrees F until the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees F.

Get rid of it. Slimy, super-wet, or oily textures on the outside of your ham might indicate bacteria growth. Juice can just be congealed oils, so use your senses to see if anything else is off. Slimy ham that's growing bacteria will usually have a smell that indicates spoilage.

How do you bake a ham without drying it out? Spiral cut hams should be covered with aluminum foil to help retain moisture when re heating. You could also place a foil pan with water underneath the ham to create some steam inside the oven to keep everything moist.

However, what many people do not know is pineapple has an enzyme called bromelain that softens muscle fiber. This enzyme reacts with the protein in the meat to break it down and increases the meat's potential to absorb more moisture. This is the reason why pineapple is one of the most preferred tenderizers.

Baking a bone-in half ham, cut side down in a lagoon of pineapple juice, means the sweet juice infuses the pork as the ham releases some of its saltiness into the liquid. Don't bother decorating the outside of your ham with fresh pineapple, as the enzymes in the fruit will turn the meat to mush.

“Typically, when you're doing a country ham, you need something sweet to neutralize the ham's saltiness, and pineapple does this really well.” And it's not just me and Benton: Pineapple shows up in ham recipes—atop the ham, in glazes slicking the ham, in shield-your-eyes versions of fried rice—the world over.

Pineapple will only change the texture of ham if you use fresh pineapple. Make sure to use canned pineapple rings when baking ham, or the acidity of the fresh pineapple will break the meat down too much and make it mushy. Fresh pineapple is fine for the glaze, however, as it's cooked down.