Gammon Steak: Choose What Goes Beside It

Gammon is cured pork leg. Swaledale describes its leg muscles and brining process; Waitrose’s unsmoked steak lists pork leg and sea salt among its ingredients. These are specific products, with their own cures and cooking instructions.

The Waitrose label identifies its steak as raw meat that needs thorough cooking. Curing is not the same as cooking. Check whether the product in front of you is raw gammon or a cooked ham slice, then use the instructions for that product. The word steak does not make it a beef steak to serve rare.

There is another distinction at the dinner table. Rosie Mackean’s ham, egg and chips for delicious. magazine begins with a whole gammon joint, simmered before it is chilled, glazed and sliced. That plate uses cooked ham carved from a joint, rather than a raw individual steak cooked in a frying pan.

Waitrose’s pineapple version grills the gammon according to its pack, while pineapple and its juice simmer separately with honey or brown sugar and mustard. Potatoes and kale complete that particular plate. The fruit is its own accompaniment, not a required topping on every gammon steak.

Cassie Best’s Good Food recipe puts the sweet finish in the steak pan instead. Honey and a splash of water are added after the meat has cooked through and started browning; apple, celery, cress and lemon go into a bulgur salad alongside it.

Those routes put fruit and sweetness in different places. One lets a diner take a piece of pineapple with the meat. The other coats the gammon and leaves the crisp apple in the salad. Choose a complete version before adding every glaze and fruit to the same plate.

Ryle’s gribiche uses cooked eggs. The yolks are blended with mustard and vinegar before oil is incorporated, then chopped whites, capers, cornichons, chives and tarragon are folded in. The result is a sauce with visible pieces, rather than an unbroken smooth emulsion.

His leeks simmer gently with wine, stock, butter and thyme before being drained for service. That keeps their cooking liquid separate from the plate’s sauce. It is an alternative to putting a fried egg on top, with the egg still present in a different form.

The linked pan recipes give different cooking times. They use different products and methods, so a short timing in one recipe cannot stand in for the instructions on every steak. Have the slower potatoes or vegetable preparation underway before the meat is ready, and keep the finish simple.

Taste any sauce before adding more salt: the meat already has a cure. Ask about the sides if ingredients matter to you. Gribiche contains egg and mustard; the leek version uses butter, while bulgur contributes wheat. Gammon is pork, and its accompaniments bring their own ingredients to the meal.