Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer – Storing leftover Easter Ham!

Easter most definitely left a ton of leftover food in my fridge. Find out today how to properly store your cooked Easter Ham!

If you’re anything like me, you do your best to only make enough food for dinner, some leftovers for guests to take home and maybe another meal for yourself. HOWEVER that never happens…at least not in my house. I could buy the smallest of hams and STILL have enough meat left over to feed 5 families. I swear it multiples as it cooks! This year I bought a small 5 pound spiral ham for Mr. Fantabulous and I. Now normally we have a few folks drop by but since I had a surprise birthday party for him the day before no one wanted to make the trek back up to our house the next day. Easter was SUPER early this year which totally screwed up my meal planning. I’m not sure who makes these decisions buy seriously, don’t do this again. It was way too early for this girlie.

That being said I was left with a ton of ham. While I can transform it into a million different, delicious recipes it’s still A LOT OF ham-based recipes that I, frankly, don’t want to ingest in a week or two. I will totally get burnt out on ham. So with that I figured perhaps I’m not the only one that has leftovers in her/his fridge. And instead of doing the norm and force-feeding the family ham til it comes out their wazoo (though I’m pretty sure that’s not a medically defined part on the body) I decided to share with you how proper store and freeze your delicious ham!

Hey you worked hard on your ham – whether you made it from scratch or paid a bajillion dollars and bought one already made, you still want to get your money’s worth, right? So let’s talk about storing it.

Refrigerated, cooked Easter ham

Cooked Easter ham, will last 3-4 days in the fridge in an air-tight container. What I do is save the juices that the ham is cooked in a small container. Then when I’m ready to re-heat ham slices I’ll actually put the ham slices in a baking dish, with the ham juices, cover tightly with foil and bake at 350 F until warmed through.

Freezing, cooked Easter ham

This is actually one of my favorite things to do with ham as it allows me to create amazing “Easter” meals for the next few months! I’ll cut my ham up into slices, cubes and various sizes for future recipes – think pizza, ham sandwiches, fritattas, casseroles and even ham breakfast bowls. Next, for slices wrap tightly in plastic wrap and then place in freezer safe bags. For cubes and pieces, place in a freezer bag and get as much air out of the bag as possible. At this point you can then freeze the cooked ham for 2-3 months.

Thawing, frozen cooked Easter ham

To properly thaw allow to defrost in the fridge overnight. I’m not a huge fan of letting it thaw in water as there is a chance it could spoil.

Stayed tuned for some awesome “leftover” ham recipes in the near future!