Plantation Ham Cakes!

The Plantation Ham Cake

Leftover ham? How could that be? Well, let me tell you, it happened to me this past weekend and I spent the good part of yesterday trying to find a leftover recipe that did not involve bean soup or egg strata. Now maybe you have heard of this recipe, but it was new to me. I read the reviews on-line and they all said the same thing: This tasted much better than I thought it would!

That settled things – I had to try it. Here’s the scoop:

Plantation Ham Cakes 

Ingredients:

2 cups ground ham (previously cooked, of course)

1 small onion, finely chopped

10 oz. frozen broccoli, chopped

3 eggs

1 cup cornmeal

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 teaspoons basil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons, ground black pepper

1/2 cup Asiago cheese, grated

2 tablespoons Olive Oil

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix thoroughly the ground ham, onion and broccoli.

Add the eggs and mix again until the eggs have been completely integrated.

In a separate bowl, mix the spices with the cornmeal.

Mix the dry ingredients into the ham mixture.

Finally, mix in the cheese. Remember, you can never have too much cheese!

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Put the Olive oil into a large skillet and preheat for a few minutes, using medium heat.

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Form hamburger-like patties from the ham mixture. (When I tried this, it made 6 big patties.)

Carefully place them in the heated skillet. If you can only fit one or two, that’s okay because you need room to flip the ham cakes.

Cook the cakes for at least 3 minutes, up to 5 minutes, on each side. Since the ham has been cooked previously, you are just warming it up. As long as the egg cooks completely and the cheese melts, you should be just fine.

The key to success is to only flip the cake once. You want that crunchy texture created by 3-5 minutes of searing on the frying pan.

After frying, put one on a bun and dig in. Remember – it just came out of the hot skillet! Could be hot!!

I tried the first one and two guests joined me in sampling the next. We all agreed:

This tasted much better than we thought it would!