Now it’s time to turn your eyes to the Christmas ham. One mistake will ruin the ham before it even gets to the oven.
Roasting ham is an important moment in many homes. Wind Lindgren
Thawing ham causes a headache for at least one Christmas celebrant. When should the ham be thawed, and how should it be done correctly?
It’s no wonder that thawing ham is thought provoking. After all, you can go into the forest. The worst mistake is to thaw the ham at room temperature. Then the worst danger can be food poisoning, when the surface parts of the ham heat up quickly and too much while the inside of the ham is still frozen. This can cause excessive bacterial growth on the surface parts of the ham.
The right place for thawing ham is the refrigerator, where the ham is thawed in its original, unopened package.
Timing is also important when it comes to thawing the ham. Melting ham takes time.
Large, 10–12 kg hams require 4–5 days to thaw. Medium-sized, 6-8 kg hams thaw in 3-4 days, and small, 2-4 kg hams in about 2-3 days.
Smaller hams are growing in popularity
Ham is still the ham on the Christmas table. According to the Christmas food survey conducted by HKFoods, 80 percent of Finns plan to eat ham at Christmas.
– The most popular ham is the 3-5-kilogram boneless party ham, which is bought around 2.1 million kilos. Thick hams weighing more than five kilograms make up about a third of all hams sold. The popularity of small hams weighing less than 3 kg is slowly increasing year by year, and the purchase of mature hams and ready-made slices also continues to grow, says the head of HK Foods’ meat business Mikko Järvinen in the bulletin.
Based on a survey conducted by Lidl, up to 60 percent of Finns choose ham as the most important food on the Christmas table. Last year, ham was voted the most important by 64 percent.
Ham is part of the Christmas table, especially in northern and eastern Finland, where ham is the number one choice for up to 70 percent of respondents. In Uusimaa, slightly more than half consider ham to be the most important part of the Christmas table.
K-Group’s sales data also reveal that smaller ham ends up on the Christmas table more and more often than before.
– In recent years, smaller and smaller hams, even weighing only 1.5 kilos, and various mature whole and sliced hams, which offer a quick and easy solution for the Christmas table, have been steadily growing in popularity. Hams weighing around three kilos are sold the most both fresh and frozen, says Kesko’s purchasing and sales manager Maria Michina in the bulletin.
In addition to ham, turkey, Karelian roast meats, and beef sirloin and sirloin and roast are also sold during Christmas. The sale of chicken breast fillets also clearly increases in December compared to a normal month.
The sales of Christmas vegetable protein products, such as Christmas seitans, roasts and skewers, have also increased in November by a few percent compared to last year, which predicts that vegetable protein products will end up on Finns’ Christmas tables slightly more than last year.