Baked Ham or Schinken is a popular Meat for Easter Dinner in Germany

from our cookbook
Recipes from a German Grandma

When Grandma took a notion to bake a ham, she used generous amounts of Grandpa’s homemade wine to baste it with while it was cooking. The spicy aroma of the ham, wine, cloves, and brown sugar baking in the oven left no doubt about what was for dinner! In the old days, she’d buy a real smoked ham, with the bone in and skin on. After having the skin taken off, it was boiled to get some of the salt out of the meat, then covered with brown sugar and cloves, and baked in wine. Those hams were truly memorable!
Chef Stephen discusses hams, then gives his own recipe:

“The old-fashioned gourmet hams are cold-smoked and cured, sometimes for up to 6 years. Most of the hams on the market today are not cured at all. They are injected with water and liquid smoke. They taste okay to me, though the flavor is sort of like jellied lunch meat, compared with the taste of a real cured ham, which has a chewy but tender texture and a mellow, lingering smoky flavor that keeps getting better with each bite. These hams are difficult to find, but can be ordered.

Go here for a recipe for
Baked Ham or Schinken