AirFryday: How to glaze your festive gammon in the air fryer

You can bake a gammon from scratch in an air fryer, but a smoked pork joint is best when boiled first. My personal recommendation is that you start the old-fashioned way and finish it in your air fryer.

For decades, I have boiled a gammon and then glazed it in the oven. It’s never occurred to me to bake it with no pre-boiling, until this week when my old friend and colleague Vivien Horler told me she bakes hers from scratch, with no boiling. So, yes, you can do that.

But I wouldn’t. It’s the boiling, and then the soaking in the stock that follows, that makes the gammon moist and gives it all the flavour of what’s in the big pot — the cloves, the peppercorns, perhaps cardamom pods, star anise or juniper berries, and of course the carrots, celery and onion.

Here are the things to know:

• You can buy a pre-boiled gammon, but make sure it has been done in this way, as many of the products labelled smoked gammon have not been boiled.


• The best result comes from boiling it with aromatics for 20 minutes per 500g, plus 15 minutes, which instructions ought to be on the packaging.


• You then need to switch off the heat and leave the gammon to cool in those juices until it reaches room temperature. This will give you that beautifully moist gammon you’re after.


• Then comes the glazing, and this is where the air fryer comes in, unless you choose to glaze it in the big old conventional oven, which takes an hour at 160°C while basting with the glaze a few times. This means that, if you’re cooking your gammon for Christmas lunch, you can get it on the go well ahead of time and only glaze it an hour or two before you’re ready to serve.

• Size counts when choosing a gammon to cook in your air fryer, but depth counts too. I bought a gammon much smaller than I normally would, as this was only a weeknight supper for us for purposes of this recipe. The one I bought was a relative tiddler at 1.3kg, but my 5.7-litre Instant Vortex Plus air fryer would have taken a gammon at least twice the size, depending on the height of the joint. 

• This is an important factor: the top of the gammon must not touch the element above it, so you might want to measure (first) the height of your air fryer and then take the tape measure with you when buying your gammon.


• Having said that, you can remove the basket/tray at the bottom of your air fryer to allow a little more height. Don’t feel that you are obliged to use the rack every time you cook in your air fryer. It is removable for a reason, and not only to clean it. Just as you would use a chip basket in a pot of oil oil for deep-frying chips, but would remove the chip basket when frying battered fish.


• Do you serve glazed gammon hot or cold? I’ve heard endless arguments about this. I’m happy to serve it at room temperature, even if everything else on the plate is hot. But serve it hot if you like, though I don’t think it will taste quite as good. Of course, that leftover gammon can come out cold with salads the next day.