Meat Dishes
Boiled Ham
A whole gammon joint simmered gently with onion, carrot, celery, bay, cloves and a splash of cider until tender and juicy, cooled in its own broth and served hot with parsley sauce made from the cooking stock, or cold for sandwiches. Covers soaking, timings by weight and what to do with the stock.
- Serves 8
- Plenty of leftovers
- 2 kg gammon: about 1 hr 40 min simmering
- Smoked or unsmoked
- Makes about 2 litres of ham stock
- British
Method
Check the salt first. Most supermarket gammon is now mild-cured and needs no soaking, but a traditional or dry-cured joint can be very salty. If you are not sure, cut a thin sliver from one end, simmer it in water for 2–3 minutes and taste it. If it is too salty to enjoy, soak the joint overnight in plenty of cold water in the fridge, changing the water once.
Weigh the joint (with any string on) to work out the cooking time: allow 20 minutes per 500 g, plus 20 minutes. A 2 kg joint needs about 1 hour 40 minutes.
Put the gammon (2 kg) in a large pan, cover with cold water and bring slowly to the boil. Taste the water: if it is very salty, pour it away, cover the joint with fresh cold water and bring it back to the boil. Skim off the grey foam that rises.
Add the onion (1 onion), carrots (2 carrots), celery (2), bay leaves (3 bay leaves), cloves (6), peppercorns (a little) and cider (325 ml). Top up with water so the meat is just covered.
Turn the heat down until the water barely trembles, half-cover with a lid and cook for the time you worked out. Keep it at a gentle simmer, never a rolling boil, which tightens the meat and makes it stringy. Skim now and then and top up with boiling water from the kettle to keep the joint covered, turning it halfway through if it pokes out.
The ham is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with little resistance, or when a probe thermometer reads 68°C in the centre. Turn off the heat and leave the joint to sit in the liquid for 30 minutes; it finishes cooking gently and stays moist.
Lift out the ham. Snip off the string and peel away the rind while it is still warm, leaving a layer of fat. Strain the stock and save it (see the notes). To glaze and bake the ham now, follow our Baked Ham with Glazes recipe from step 4.
For the parsley sauce, melt the butter (40 g) in a saucepan, stir in the flour (40 g) and cook for 1 minute without browning. Gradually whisk in the milk (350 ml) and the ham stock (200 ml), then simmer, stirring, for 5 minutes until smooth and thick enough to coat a spoon. Stir in the parsley (1) and mustard (1 tsp), then taste and add pepper and lemon (to taste); it will rarely need salt.
Carve the ham into thick slices and serve hot with the parsley sauce, boiled potatoes and buttered cabbage or broad beans, or leave it to cool completely and serve cold.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
See also
Chef’s notes
- Choosing a joint: gammon is the hind leg of the pig cured like bacon; it becomes ham once it is cooked. Smoked gammon has a deeper, bacony flavour; unsmoked is milder and sweeter and is the usual choice for Christmas. Dry-cured joints shrink less and have the best texture; joints labelled “with added water” shrink most. Allow 200–250 g raw boneless gammon per person, more if you want leftovers.
- Bone-in gammon (a half leg or knuckle end) has more flavour but needs about 25% longer; weigh it with the bone.
- Cooking times: under 1.5 kg allow 25 minutes per 500 g plus 20 minutes; over 5 kg allow 15–17 minutes per 500 g. A probe thermometer (68°C in the centre) takes away the guesswork.
- The stock: taste it before using; if it is very salty, dilute it with water or unsalted stock. Cool it, chill it, lift off the fat and use it for pea and ham soup, split pea or lentil soup, or to cook cabbage. It keeps for 3 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.
- Ham in cola: for a sweet, sticky version, simmer the joint in 2 litres of full-sugar cola with just the onion instead of the water, vegetables and cider, then finish with the cola and treacle glaze in our Baked Ham with Glazes.
- In the US: most hams sold in supermarkets are already cooked and should not be boiled. Use an uncooked cured ham labelled “cook before eating” or “fresh-cured” (a butcher can order one).
- Cooked ham keeps for 4–5 days in the fridge, wrapped in a clean tea towel or foil. Cooked sliced ham freezes for 2 months.
The Christmas ham
Boiled salt pork and pease pudding fed English households for centuries, and a whole boiled ham was a feast-day dish, kept for Christmas and Easter when a family pig was killed in the autumn and its legs salted and hung.
The word gammon comes from the Old Northern French gambon, a ham or leg. Wiltshire became famous in the 19th century for its mild brine cure, which is the style most British gammon follows today.
How this recipe was developed
We compared boiled gammon from Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein with the best-rated versions from BBC Food and BBC Good Food, and checked the timings against our own original ham guide.
- Taste before you soak. Rick Stein simmers a thin slice and tastes it before deciding to soak overnight; Jamie Oliver soaks overnight or poaches for half an hour first. Modern mild cures rarely need it, so we test rather than soak by default.
- Bring to the boil and change the water if salty. The traditional tip from our original ham guide and the Hairy Bikers’ honey and marmalade gammon for BBC Food (4.9/5, 47 ratings) is to boil, drain and start again with fresh water.
- 20 minutes per 500 g, plus 20. BBC Food’s honey-glazed gammon (4.8/5, 155 ratings) simmers for 20 minutes per 500 g; we add 20 minutes because this ham is served straight from the pot, and give a probe target of 68°C (Rick Stein cooks to 65°C, then cools the joint in the liquid).
- Aromatics and cider. Gordon Ramsay uses carrots, leek, onion, peppercorns, coriander seeds, cinnamon and bay; Rick Stein adds a bottle of cider, cloves and bay. We kept the cider, cloves, bay and the simple vegetables.
- Cool in the broth. Jamie Oliver and BBC Good Food’s honey-glazed ham (4.7/5, 133 ratings) leave the joint in its liquid for 30 minutes before lifting it out; Gordon Ramsay cools it overnight in the stock when cooking ahead.
- Save the stock. Every source keeps the cooking liquor for soup; Jamie warns it can be too salty for gravy, so we tell you to taste and dilute it.
- Parsley sauce made with the stock. James Martin’s marmalade-glazed gammon for BBC Food (5.0/5, 11 ratings) serves a classic parsley sauce; we make ours with part ham stock for more flavour.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- Gordon Ramsay: Honey Glazed Ham
- Jamie Oliver: How to cook the perfect roast ham (roasted marmalade ham)
- Rick Stein: Baked ham with new potatoes and salad cream (Rick Stein’s Cornwall, BBC Food) (3.9/5, 11 ratings)
- BBC Food: Honey-glazed gammon (4.8/5, 155 ratings)
- BBC Good Food (Esther Clark): Honey-glazed ham (4.7/5, 133 ratings)
- BBC Food (The Hairy Bikers): Honey and marmalade-glazed gammon joint (4.9/5, 47 ratings)
- BBC Food (James Martin): Marmalade-glazed gammon (5.0/5, 11 ratings)
- Cookeryonline: How to Cook Ham (our original guide)
- Nigella Lawson: Ham in Coca-Cola
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.