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Fried Ham Steak-Glazed Carrots
1 slice ham cut 1 inch thick 1 tablespoon shortening 1 cup water 12 small cooked carrots Parboil ham if necessary. Drain. Sear quickly on both sides in hot fat in frying pan. Add the water, cover pan and simmer 30 minutes. Add carrots and cook together for 20 minutes, basting the carrots frequently with the pan drippings. Serves 6.
A one-pan braise from the era when ham came from the butcher as a thick cut off a whole bone-in ham, often heavily salted and not fully cured for immediate eating. Most of the adjustment needed today is to the ham itself.
- Parboil only if the ham needs it"If necessary" refers to dry-salt-cured country ham, which is aggressively salty and benefits from 10-15 minutes in simmering water, drained and discarded. A modern supermarket ham steak is wet-cured, mild and fully cooked; skip the parboil entirely or the meat will be waterlogged.
- The 30-minute simmer is for raw hamWith a fully cooked ham steak the long covered simmer only dries the fibers out. Sear it, add the water, and give it 8-10 minutes covered before the carrots go in. Reserve the full half hour for genuinely uncured or country ham.
- One inch is thicker than you will find pre-packagedHam steaks sold shrink-wrapped run about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Ask a butcher to cut a slice a full inch thick off a bone-in ham, or the timings here collapse.
- ShorteningIn this period "shortening" could mean lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat. Any neutral oil works, and if the ham has a fat edge you can render that in the pan and skip added fat altogether.
- The carrots go in already cookedThey are boiled or steamed to tender beforehand; the 20 minutes in the pan is for glazing, not cooking. Raw carrots added at this stage will still be firm at the end.
- Reduce for a real glazeThe hinge is the liquid. If a cup of water is still thin and watery when the carrots go in, uncover the pan so it reduces to a syrupy few tablespoons that will cling. Baste steadily through the last several minutes.
- SaltDo not salt anything until the end. The pan liquid concentrates the ham's cure as it reduces, and the glaze can easily go past edible.
- YieldSix servings from one slice assumes a large steak and a table of side dishes. A one-inch slice of about 1 1/2 to 2 lb is realistic for six; smaller cuts feed three or four.
Ham braised in its own liquor with a sweet root vegetable is old American farmhouse cooking dressed for a weekday dish. The instruction to parboil is the tell: dry-salt curing for keeping rather than for flavor persisted well into the twentieth century, particularly for country hams, and soaking or parboiling was often needed before such a ham reached the pan. The carrot glaze here does the work that a sugar or cider glaze does on a whole baked ham, scaled down to a single skillet.