We are having a winter storm today so I am baking a ham. In a few minutes, I will be trimming the extra fat and the rine off of the ham.
Just curious what do you use the rind for?
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It goes in the pressure cooker with the bone from the ham and any other trimmings, as well as whatever jellied/caramelized juices comes out of the ham into the pan that you bake it in. Plus a bit of onion and garlic. I am a fan of very long cook times when making bone broth, even in a pressure cooker. At least two hours, and more is better.
Every bone-in ham we've cooked so far has yielded enough scrap to make at least 4 quarts of good rich bone broth.
I dice up the big chunks of fat and the rind and render it for cooking. The leftover cracklings are salted and inhaled.
The goo in the pan is saved for cooking beans and greens. I like to freeze it and break of chunks as needed to add for cooking.
The ham bone and small fat scraps are added to the crockpot with a diced onion and a 2 pound bag of pinto beans and cook away for about 18 to 24 hours depending on bean texture. It smells wonderful when I have to get up in the middle of the night! We eat a few meals over rice or cornbread. Part gets packaged for freezer. It smashes up and makes great refrained beans too.
We get a lot of meals and use out of the ham for two people. I cooked one last weekend. So far we've had sliced ham for dinner and with eggs for breakfast, ham with beans and greens, in a soup, scalloped potatoes, evening snack of cracklings, couple meals of pintos and I still have a good sized chunk left! Not bad for a 8+ pound spiral sliced ham I got for 5.22 on sale...🐷👍
Excellent suggestions above. I dice the fat pretty fine and soak it to hopefully remove some of the salt. Then it goes out to the suet feeder for the wee birds, in small amounts. I'm still worried about the salt content, but when temps drop down below -20C they are all over it. Especially woodpeckers.
Thanks, everyone for all the great suggestions.
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I use the rind for seasoning then I pick it out if it's too hard to chew.
I am trying to eliminate anything going into the trash.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
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