AIUI, the difference between gammon and ham is that ham is cooked, and gammon is sold raw.
(I’ve been watching 91-year-old Grandad Joe’s FB reels.)
Gammon in the UK is typically bought as a whole joint of cured pork - it may be smoked or unsmoked and usually these days, has the bone removed, but bone-in is occasionally offered.
It is usually prepared by soaking, then boiling and/or baking. Glazing with honey and mustard is popular. It is typically eaten hot or warm (at least at the first serving - leftovers are often eaten cold).
I’m not sure if this is the same as what might be called ‘a ham’ in the USA. Most of the time when people talk about ham here, they are most often talking about cold (and often *thin) slices of cured pork, often purchased already sliced. In general (with exceptions, I’m sure) ham is a cold deli meat for sandwiches, salads, buffets etc. Gammon is a joint, served as the meat component of a hot dinner.
“Ham” would be the term used for both concepts in the U.S., both a sliced (cold) lunch meat, and a whole joint, served and sliced hot as part of a meal.
There is considerable overlap - it’s not uncommon to find sliced ‘gammon ham’ in a supermarket chiller (usually describing big, oval, uniform slices conspicuously cut from a whole joint).
We always get spiral-cut on-the-bone hams. A coworker go the bone and a lot of meat from the potluck we had at the office last week. She said she’s going to make beans.
The Grandad Joe reel I watched was him being served his favourite dinner: Homemade chips fried in lard a gammon steak topped with a lard-fried egg, beans, and mushroom. The ‘gammon’ looked like what we would call a ‘ham steak’ (we get them with or without the circle of bone here) that is typically heated (since they’re already cooked) by frying so that you have some nice browning.
Yeah, ‘gammon steak’ is another presentation - purchased as a thick disc of meat and cooked by frying.
Only it’s raw when you buy it, right?
One distinction: gammon is usually very salty. If it’s baked without first soaking, it can come out too salty.
I think they are the same thing. The name ‘gammon’ comes from ‘jambon’ which means ‘ham’. We just have two different terms for different usages of a similar thing.
Yeah; it’s never eaten raw.
I mean, I think you can also buy it cooked in the same way you can buy cooked chickens etc.
Never would have considered eating it raw.
Here, hams and ham steaks are precooked when you buy them. Yes, they can be salty; but not so much that you have to boil them first.
So the distinction is that one isn’t cooked when you buy it, and the other one is.
American, here. My only context for the use of “gammon” was as a synonym for “nonsense.” I believe this was in use mainly in the UK; I assume I’ve read it in novels written or set in the 18th or 19th centuries. Typically it would appear in dialogue, as in ‘stop talking gammon!’ or ‘don’t gammon me.’
Looking it up I see it’s in current use, again mainly in the UK apparently, as an insult to white people with right-wing views. Something about being red-faced.
That sounds like what might be called “country ham” in the US. Here is the Southern point of view.
Around here (click on my avatar for “here”), sometimes they’re precooked and sometimes they’re not. I’ve bought ham with labels reading “fully cooked” and other ham with labels warning that it’s not cooked and shouldn’t be eaten without cooking it first; both as slices and as entire hams. But they’re always smoked and/or cured; if not, the same cut is a pork roast, not ham.
I’ve never encountered uncooked ham(s). (Southern California native.)
OK, I believe you. But I have encountered uncooked hams. – I’ve got two ham slices in the freezer right now. One says on the label that it’s fully cooked; the other one says clearly on the label that it isn’t.
I buy ham from a local Polish sausage maker. Their hams are not cooked, and if you ask, they’ll give you printed instructions on how to cook them. Supermarket hams are typically precooked.
It’s a cut, even here in the southern states, that’s lost favor.
It’s a bunch of trouble.
Can be unsafe if not cooked an extremely long time. Which often results in a nearly dried out hunk o’ jerky.
My Granny cooked them. All day. In an oven. So, as needs must it was done in winter.
She boiled hers, first, in the giant of a pot to relieve in of its super saltiness. Then baked it.
I never liked it. But boy my Daddy and the other kin loved it.
I like the hamminess of ham.
If you wanna try it I believe you can buy slices of pre-cooked country ham that are sliced(might say biscuit slices) and shrink wrapped close to where summer sausage and that stuff is kept. It’s chewy.
Its still in use in Aboriginal Australian English in that same sense of something being nonsense, or someone lying or trying to deceive you.
Its attested as far back as 1828 and still in common use. We don’t have that contemporary English meaning.
Mostly, but somewhat loosely.
Yeah, it’s more specifically the kind of people who rant to the point of being red-faced and breathless about their right-wing views (or sometimes just those who get exercised about whatever problem-du-jour is in the Daily Mail). Pretty good article about it all here: GAMMON – UP AGAINST THE WALL | tony thorne
I particularly liked this bit:
‘It’s offensive to call people whose reactionary apoplexy makes them go pink-faced “gammons”. The correct term is “people of choler”.’