Recipe(tried): Washing and Baking a Virginia (Smithfield) Ham

We live here in VA and the best way to prepare the ham is to wash it in hot water, scrubbing with a vegetable brush to remove the pepper and curing salt, if you don't want it real salty you can soak it in ginger ale for a few hours. The best and easiest way to prepare is to heat oven to 500 F and bake ham for 15 mintutes, turn oven off and leave in oven for 3 hours, turn oven back on 500 f for another 15 minutes then off and leave overnight (6-8 hours). Once you put ham in oven DO NOT open oven door. This is the easiest. Our favorite treat is to make ham pot pie. If you're interested I can send you the recipe for the strip dumplings. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas!