Gammon - help with the crackling

[NiceCupOfTea]

Reading up on all these gammons everyone is cooking has whetted my appetite. I'll boil it up a couple of times to get some saltiness out, and then roast it like I normally do, covered with honey and cloves.

The problem I have is this. The first time I did this (years ago) I left that hard skin covering the fat on the gammon whilst I roasted it, and it just wasn't right. So in consecutive years, I've always chopped the skin off leaving the white fat exposed to roast up nicely.

Is this the correct way to do it, as I'm still sure I should leave the skin on to get proper crackling? Plus, quite frankly it is a pain in the neck cutting it off.

[naz_nomad]

Don't put anything on the skin ..no oil, honey, nothing.

Make sure the skin is dry before putting it in the oven.

Don't baste during cooking, the skin will do that by keeping the moisture in the meat for you.

[fairkatrina]

Naz's answer will give you a nice gammon, but I doubt it will produce crackling. If you want crackling, what I find works best is scoring the skin, then rubbing salt and lemon juice into it before cooking.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Thank you both for taking time to answer. I've decided not to bother with the gammon after all but will experiment with both your suggestions next time I do. May even do two mini ones and see which works best!

I'm glad you both leave the skin on which was my initial query. At least I can score you both 3* without contradicting myself.

[clever trev]

You do take the skin off better to do this when the gammon is hot after the second and last boil up,your glazing sounds good, i always boil till cooked and then just flash off in the oven at high tem for half hour or so just to brown over and to glaze,fully roasting you will have 50% weight loss,boiling
only 30%.a good tip for you add about 2 tplsp of sugar when boiling this will help reduce salt level and partly sweet cure the joint. happy cooking.