Winter Jewel Healthy Chopped Ham Salad

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If you had a ham for Thanksgiving, no doubt you have a stash of leftover ham in the freezer right about now, awaiting inspiration.

Even the largest holiday gatherings have a hard time finishing a ham, due to the plethora of other delicious food on the table. After all, that ham has to compete with turkey, stuffing, yams, green beans, rolls and pie!

And thus are born many tasty meals of leftover ham. This is a good thing.

It isn’t the first ham meal we need help with, is it? To start, we simply glaze our ham and serve it in nice, juicy slabs, to our eager eaters. It’s the day after, the week after, and next month, when we pull out the leftovers carefully stashed away, that we need a creative spark.

What to do with leftover ham?

I baked a Smithfield Pecan Praline Holiday Spiral Sliced Ham, and it was delicious! The Pecan Praline glaze gave it a sort of southern sweet and savory twist, and I loved how easy it was to serve since it was already spiral sliced. It comes fully cooked and trimmed, so all it needs is a heat-up in the oven to warm it through and set the glaze.

When our first dinner was done, I portioned it up: Some went into the refrigerator — to be used in ham and cheese sandwiches, and adorning a baked potato for another dinner – and the rest went into several containers in the freezer. If you freeze the ham in portions that suit your family size, you have only to pull out a single container, let it thaw in the refrigerator for a day, and proceed with whatever recipe you want to make.

I wanted to make a colorful winter salad, as an antidote to all the heavier meals we have been eating lately, and ham made the perfect contribution. Ham lent the salty, meaty chew, lentils added a healthy protein-rich base, a crunchy persimmon added welcome sweetness and Brussels sprouts added color and healthy greenery. The barest, most simple dressing was all these ingredients needed, topped by a shimmer of red rubies from the pomegranate.

Pink, green, orange, red, brown – can this salad get any prettier or more painterly? Art in a bowl.

Try my new salad creation when you have leftover ham!

Recipe: Winter Jewel Healthy Chopped Ham Salad

Summary: Savory and sweet, this winter chopped ham salad is the perfect use for leftover ham. Bonus points for adding more color!

Ingredients

1 cup diced ham (I used Smithfield Pecan Praline Holiday Spiral Sliced Ham)
1 Fuyu persimmon, stemmed and diced small
1 cup steamed lentils, cold (I used Melissa’s Steamed Lentils)
8 Brussels sprouts (about 1 cup chiffonade cut)
Garnish: Pomegranate arils (the things you think of as the seeds)

Dressing

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Meyer lemon juice
¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce (add more if you like things really hot)

Instructions

Make sure your ham and persimmon are cut into a small dice, roughly the same size (this makes a prettier salad). Add both ham and persimmon to a large salad bowl. Add cooled lentils. Halve Brussels sprouts and shred using a mandolin or cut in chiffonade style with a large knife; you should have about 1 cup of chiffonade-cut Brussels sprouts). Add to bowl.
In a small jar, add oil, lemon juice and Tabasco and shake vigorously. Pour dressing over salad and stir gently to coat and combine.
Scoop salad into wide, shallow bowls or pretty plates, and sprinkle top with pomegranate arils.
Serves 2 as a main dish. Can easily be doubled or tripled.

Source

Dorothy Reinhold | Shockingly Delicious

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Diet tags: High protein
Number of servings (yield): 2
Culinary tradition: USA (Nouveau)
My rating 5 stars: ★★★★★

FTC disclosure: This post is sponsored by Smithfield Foods. I received compensation for my time and ham for recipe development. Content and opinions are my own. Recipe and photos of salad are Shockingly Delicious originals. Photo of sliced ham © 2013 Smithfield Packing Co., Inc.; used with permission.

Tagged as: Brussels sprouts, Fuyu persimmon, ham, ham salad, leftover ham, lentil salad, lentils, Meyer lemon, pomegranate, Salad, Tabasco