I don't like ham. Mostly. I don't like canned ham, I don't like deli ham, I don't like honey baked ham. However, when we started buying whole pigs, I started having to deal with ham. Cured, smoked, bone-in cooked hams. Two of them per half-pig. Huge ones.

So basically, I reprocess them into usable pork. So all I do is take a knife and cut shallowly through the skin in the traditional ham diamond pattern. Toss it into a roasting pan, cover it with foil, set the oven to 250, and let it go for at least five hours.

Take it out to cool, remove the skin, strip the usable meat off the bone, shred or chunk it, and bag it up / freeze it for future use. I will admit, this is not a terribly useful technique for people who find themselves in posession of hams they would not otherwise have bought, but that's blogging for you.

Plus, I'm doing one right now so that I will have enough ham for an amazing soup I plan to make for the crowd on Monday. It went over really well the first time I made it, and it's seriously turned into soup weather here in Minneapolis.