Ten Things to Do With Sale - Priced Ham

Find a great price on pork and want to stretch that grocery budget even further? Ham is an incredibly versatile item to work into your monthly menu plans, and particularly affordable when it's on sale. Here are ten cooked ham recipes for incorporating "stretched" ham at home.

Breakfast Pizza

This stuff is really yummy. Just pour on raw scrambled eggs instead of tomato sauce. Add chopped bits of left over ham, onions, and other items you might normally throw in an omelet, such as green peppers. Voila! Pizza for breakfast. It takes about the usual time to bake as a regular pizza would. Don't forget the cheese!

Carbonara

Ham, eggs and dairy to the rescue again. This time with pasta. Yeah, baby! Here's a simple affordable carbonara recipe to get you started.

Quiche

This is a very elegant and affordable dish to serve either hot or cold. Add a crisp salad and your favorite table wine. Looking to cut calories? Skip the pastry crust and call it a frittata.

Breakfast Fried Rice

Scramble up some eggs, add some left over rice, diced ham, sliced green onions and anything else that grabs you (like garlic!).Cook like you would regular fried rice. Serve with soy sauce, or my favorite, Tobasco. Breakfast fried rice because one of my very favorite recipes when I lived on Guam. We make this quite often at our house.

Sliced Cold With Side Dishes

Beans, cole slaw, macaroni salad . . . take your pick.

Baked Ham and Potato Scallop

Growing up in New England, we ate this quite a bit. Particularly since Maine is a big potato state. Very affordable, and can be made in one dish for easy clean up. It's one of many potato ideas you can use to save money.

Soup

I like ham and bean in a tomato broth with vegetables, as well as homemade split pea soup. There are tons of other options out there to suit a variety of tastes.

Ham, Vegetable and Cheese Calzones

These are very tasty, particularly with broccoli. My mother-in-law does something similar with frozen bread dough. She skips the sauce and just puts those three ingredients in the middle and bakes up the loaf in a regular bread pan. She calls it "stuffed bread" and it's one of my husband's favorite family lunches. Here's a dry mix recipe for pizza dough to keep things even more affordable.

Omelets

Some left over ham, veggies and cheese tossed in with an omelet makes a killer brunch item or lazy weekend breakfast.

Sandwich Filling

Mix up chopped ham with a little hard boiled egg and your favorite dressing and seasoning. You're all set for a brown bag lunch. If you are a die-hard sandwich fan, here are some other sandwich ideas designed to inspire.

As with the previous post regarding what to do with large bags of chicken legs, the trick here is to bake up a large ham in advance, preferrably for dinner so you don't have an extra mess to clean up. Break the left over ham down into smaller freezer bags and use for the various ideas above when it's convenient for you. Do you have any cooked ham recipes you are particularly fond of?

Photo by RBerteig