Every December someone rings the Prahran counter on the 22nd to ask if a half leg will do for fourteen. The honest answer is that it depends on what else is on the table, and on whether you want to be eating ham until New Year. Most people do.
Here is how we work it out.
The short answer
For bone-in ham, allow around 500g per person. For boneless, allow 150g to 250g.
That is for ham as the centrepiece. If it is sitting alongside a turkey or a roast, you can come down to 400g for the bone-in ham and 150g for the boneless ham.
Bone-in or boneless changes the maths
A leg on the bone weighs more than it feeds. The bone is roughly 1kg of the total, so a 8kg whole ham is around 7kg of meat. The same goes for the half ham, however the chump end you get more meat and much less bone.
Boneless is all meat, so the number on the label is the number you are feeding. It is the easier calculation and the easier carve. It is also the one to order if you have never carved a ham, which is most people.
Are you feeding people once, or feeding them for four days?
This is the question that actually decides the size.
A ham is one of the few things you buy at Christmas that gets better as a leftover. Sandwiches, pea and ham soup, fried rice, a toastie on Boxing Day when nobody wants to cook. If that is the plan, order a size up and stop worrying about the per-head number.
If you want it gone on the day, order to the figures above and no more.
Half leg or whole leg
A half leg serves 10 to 12 A whole leg serves 15 to 20 people.
The whole leg is the one that sells out first, every year, and it is booked against a cure that runs to a timetable. Days cannot be added to it. If you want one, order it early.
Ask us
Tell us how many you are feeding and what else is going on the table, and we will tell you which one fits. That is a faster conversation than reading a chart.
Bentleigh, Beaumaris, Prahran Market, South Melbourne Market, Queen Victoria Market, East Brunswick Village.
Browse Christmas ham. Read how to glaze it and what to do with the leftovers.
