Maple Smoked Ham Roast & Garlic Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Photo Credit: V.Gray

Purchasing our Traeger Tailgater last summer has been one of the best investments we have made. I call Sundays "Smoker Sundays", we start the prep for this on Thursday or Friday night. As we start to wake up Sunday morning to the beautiful smell of coffee, I get up and start our smoker.

Last summer my brother-in-law raised pigs, which resulted in an amazing pig roast hosted by the boys last September and lots of pork to go around for this summer's smoker season. Looking through our pork package, I was inspired by Easter (my father-in-law makes the BEST spiral ham), and the end of sugar bush season (maple syrup).

I have been wanting to try and do my own version of pork with a maple glaze for a bit now, so a few weeks ago I started looking around for local maple syrup to make this recipe happen. This roast turned out juicy, full of flavour and just out right delicious! so here is what we did and how we did it!

Maple Smoked Ham Roast & Garlic Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

A lot of my recipes are lactose free and gluten free, however you can use in regular milk, dairy products and wheat based products.

Maple Smoked Ham Roast

• 1 Ham or Pork Roast

• 2 cups of Maple Syrup

• 1/4 cup of red pepper flakes

• 1 tbsp of seasoning salt

• 1 tbsp of pepper

• 1/4 cup of honey

• baking tin

• tin foil

Total prep time: 5 minutes

Total marinate time: 48 hours

Total smoke time: 8 hours Photo Credit: V.Gray

Total rest time: 15 minutes

Step by Step for Maple Smoked Ham Roast

1. Place the thawed meat it in a baking tin and put a light coating of the maple syrup over the roast. Then sprinkle your red pepper flakes, seasoning salt and pepper finish by drizzling honey and the remaining maple syrup over the top. Cover with tin foil, let this rest in the fridge for 48 hours. This image is of what your roast will look like after 48 hours.

Photo Credit: V.Gray

2. Preheat your smoker to 180C, I used Furtado Farms True North pellets. These pellets are a blend of hickory, sugar maple and cherry woods. Uncover the roast, leaving it in the baking tin placed directly on the smoker (directly from the fridge). The roast will smoke at this temperature for 7 hours. It is very important that you do not open the lid while you are smoking. Lift the lid will alter the temperature of the smoker and you will loose flavour as well.

3. After 7 hours, drizzle 1/4 cup of maple syrup on top. At this time turn your smoker up to 225C and let the roast continue to smoke for an additional 45 minutes.

4. Take your roast off the smoker, cover with tin foil and let the roast rest for 15 minutes.

Then cut and serve.

Photo Credit: V.Gray

Garlic Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 bags of mini potatoes

• 3 cloves of garlic

• 1 tbsp of lactose free butter

• 1/4 cup of lactose free milk

• 1 tsp of oregano

• 1 tsp of garlic powder

• salt to taste

• pepper to taste

• 1/2 cup of lactose free cheese

• baking tin

Total prep time: 1 hour

Total fridge time: 4 hours Photo Credit: V.Gray

Total smoke time: 1 hour

Total rest time: 10 minutes

Step by Step for Garlic Cheese Mashed Potatoes

1. Clean and halve your mini potatoes into a pot. Cover potatoes with water and bring to a boil. In the last 5 minutes of boiling add 3 un-skinned cloves of garlic.

2. Remove from heat and drain your potatoes and garlic, so there is no remaining water in the pot.

3. Add milk, butter, salt, pepper, oregano and garlic powder mash with a hand masher. Once all the chunks are broken down, use a hand mixer to whip the mixture. Create nice creamy and smooth texture.

4. Pour mixture into a baking tin and let rest in the fridge for 4 hours or until cold.

5. Preheat your smoker to 225C, I put these on with the ham roast at the same time (reference step 3 in Maple Smoked Ham Roast above, same pellets are used).

6. Remove potatoes from the fridge and sprinkle the grated cheese on top with a light dusting of garlic powder.

Photo Credit: V.Gray

7. Place in the smoker and cook for 1 hour.

8. Remove from the smoker and let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Photo Credit: V.Gray

To finish off this meal, I made a quick caesar salad as the remaining side dish. Smoker Sunday's are my favourite because we normally share this meal with family and friends. We enjoyed this recipe and it is kid approved as well!

Stay tuned to see what we smoke next on Smoker Sunday! Cheers!

**Please note that all opinions and views expressed in this post are my own, from my own experiences. If you would like to see more pictures follow me on Instagram vikki.gray **