TRUE FACT: when I was in college, I worked at a Honeybaked Ham store for over a year. Thus, I know everything there is to know about ham. Okay that's not true, but I do have a surprising amount of ham-related knowledge.
Ham is the thigh of the pig, which is usually preserved in some manner (be it cured, smoked, salted, or a combination). You can buy raw ham (usually called "fresh ham") and roast it at home, but it won't taste like ham. It will just taste like pork. That's a weird thing to say, but you know what I mean: what makes ham taste hammy is the preservation process. In other words, all the salt.
What? No. Image courtesy Flickr/mandiberg
When most people talk about buying "a ham" they mean a half ham: either the top or the bottom half of the thigh. You can certainly buy a whole ham, but it's a lot of meat.
Family traditions: ham for Christmas
Easter and Christmas are the big ham holidays. If you want to serve a ham for the holidays, call your store a month ahead of time and place a reservation. Yes, really. Hams are shipped by the truckload, and when they run out, they run out. It's not like a bakery, where they can just run into the back and make more.
It's worth the effort to call well ahead of time, and it saves you running around the day before Christmas Eve trying to find a store that still has ham in stock.
Image courtesy Flickr/Peter L. Barker
Choosing a ham: should I buy butt end or shank?
When you buy a ham at a proper butcher store, you get the choice between the shank end or the butt end. They may not volunteer this option; if you just ask for "a ham" they may just grab the first thing that comes to hand. This will probably be the shank end, because most people want the butt end. This leaves most butchers with a surplus of shank ends they are happy to pawn off on people who don't know or don't care about the difference.
The butt end is round, usually smaller, but it has more meat versus bone. If you want to buy a ham mainly to serve it as a meal, and you don't really care about the bone, then you definitely want to ask for a butt end ham.
Image courtesy Flickr/Renee S. Suen
The shank end is long and triangular, and usually weighs more than the average butt end. That's because it has a lot of bone. If you are really into the idea of cooking with the ham bone, then you want a shank end.
There is one exception to this rule of thumb: if you want a really nice presentation. The shank end is much easier to carve, and gives you a lot of large, clean, good-looking slices of meat. By comparison, the butt end pieces sometimes come out funny weird small sizes, and tend to fall apart a little. Shank end slices definitely look nicer. (This is why, at the store where I worked, we always used shank end slices to make the party platters.)
Image courtesy Flickr/Eric Hunt
Cooking a ham
Unless you have bought a fresh ham, your work is basically done. Proper ham is already fully cooked and ready to go. Convenient, right?
If you want to serve your ham hot, simply warm it in the oven. Place it cut side down on a roasting pan, wrap it loosely in foil, and bake it at 325 degrees for 10-12 minutes a pound. Don't overcook it, remember you're basically just warming it up. It's better to be a little bit on the cool side than too hot. If you overcook a fully cooked ham, it will dry out and get tough. Yuck.
To serve your ham cold, just, like… eat it. Definitely DO NOT stand in the kitchen, pick slices off the ham, and pop them into your mouth. I mean, not where anyone can see you, obviously.
Image courtesy Flickr/pockafwye
How to carve a ham
Ham comes with handy pre-defined sections that are pretty easy to carve, once you have spotted them. (I'm assuming that you have bought a pre-sliced ham, which you definitely should if you can. It makes the carving job a lot easier.)
Each of these sections has a thin fat border between the next one. This Smithfield page has a nice diagram.
By the way, here's a trick if you want a nice presentation at the table: loosen up the first few slices and gently fold them down so that they cover up the bone. You will notice that most ham pictures (like the one on that Smithfield page) are staged in this way.
Main image courtesy Flickr/boodoo
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