Seven To Order: The Best of Sydney’s Christmas Hams

Ham is the Christmas menu item that keeps on giving. Who here among us hasn’t snuck slices in the lead up to the big day? Gasped over a particularly massive clove-studded centrepiece? Revelled in the ham toasties and sandwiches that form the bulk of our post-Christmas diet?

If you’re committing to a ham, you want to make it a good one – so we’ve rounded up the six best to order for a very merry Christmas indeed.

Whole Beast Butchery

Marrickville’s Whole Beast Butchery does what it says on the tin – owner Marcus Papadopoulo orders in whole animals, then breaks them down for your buying pleasure. Free-range pigs from Cowra are on the menu this year, prepared to Papadopoulo’s own recipe, then slow-cured with the bone in and gently smoked over Australian ironbark to deliver a robust flavour.

Hams are made every day up until Christmas, so are available for walk-in orders too.

Whole Beast Butchery’s bone-in hams are sold as a whole, half or quarter leg for $28.95 per kilogram. Order by calling the store on 0420 710 505 or emailing [email protected].

Ardi’s Block to Grill

Ardi’s is dedicated to preserving butchering traditions and supplying Clovelly and Surry Hills locals with ethical, premium meat. Its Christmas hams are no different. They’re hand-chosen from a boutique farm in Cowra, then cured before smoking “the old-school way”, the team tells Broadsheet. House-made glaze – cinnamon or orange – is also available and for an extra fee the team will prepare your ham for glazing (skin removed and studded with cloves).

Whole and half-legs of bone-in ham are sold at $29.90 per kilogram; whole legs are typically 9 to 10 kilograms. Order in-store or by emailing [email protected] by December 18.

Victor Churchill

Naturally, one of Sydney’s premier butchers is going to be selling a ham that’s something special. These hams are taken from full-blood rare-breed black Berkshire pigs, raised in northern NSW specifically for Victor Churchill. Considered the “Wagyu of pork”, each ham is delicately marbled, a quality enhanced by a 12-hour smoke over beechwood according to a recipe that’s been handed down through generations.

Opt for glazed and your ham will arrive carefully scored, studded with cloves and glossy with Victor Churchill’s signature blend of maple syrup, mustard powder and apple cider vinegar. The butcher is also offering a full leg of suckling pig and hoof-on ham for those seeking something a little different.

A full leg of ham (seven kilograms; serves 14 to 16) is $340; a full leg of glazed ham (seven kilograms) is $450. A half leg (3.5 kilograms; serves six) is $175. A whole suckling pig leg (1.4 kilograms; serves three to four people) is $155. Order online for in-store pick up or delivery.

Feather and Bone

Order from ethical butcher Feather and Bone to guarantee your meat comes from a pig that happily roamed and foraged outside on a sustainably managed local farm. Each ham is labelled with the farm it was raised on, so you can trace exactly where it came from.

Feather and Bone orders whole animals and breaks them down in-house. Each of its hams is brined in a mixture of salt and sugar, then lightly smoked. Pay a little extra and the team will skin and score it for you, so you can slather on its unctuous glaze made of Malfroy’s Gold honey and beer from the locals at Wildflower.

Easy-carve (deboned) whole legs cost $304 (seven to 7.9 kilograms) or $335.50 (eight to 8.9 kilograms). A half leg costs $158 (3.25–3.75 kilograms). Order online for in-store pick up in Marrickville or Waverley, or home delivery.

Haverick Meats

Haverick is mainly a wholesale operation, supplying the discerning likes of Aria and Bistecca with premium meats. But it also has a side hustle selling to discerning members of the public, meaning you can buy your festive ham from one of the city’s top meat purveyors. This year it’s doing whole legs of rare-breed black Berkshire hams grown on a farm near Byron Bay. They’re well marbled and have a higher fat content than your average pig. That means all those juices get trapped during the cooking and curing process, making for a very juicy ham.

Haverick double smokes its cuts, giving them a richly caramelised outer crust and beautifully smoky flavour.

A whole boneless leg of ham costs $173.40 (five to six kilograms); a whole bone-in leg costs $197.10 (eight to nine kilograms); a bone-in half leg costs $131.45 (4.5 to five kilograms). Order online for home delivery on December 19 or 23, 2024.

Australian Meat Emporium

Step inside Australian Meat Emporium and you’ll find yourself in what’s essentially a factory-sized coolroom. For Christmas, the team’s buddied up with Bangalow Sweet Pork to source its hams – which are butchered in-house – from small family-run farms that don’t use antibiotics or add hormones. It’s also selling small-batch free-range Borrowdale half leg hams, which are Beechwood-smoked and available from the butt end or the hock end.

A whole leg of Australian Meat Emporium ham costs up to $175.89 (8.5–11 kilograms); a half leg costs up to $95.94 (4.5 to six kilograms). A half leg of bone-in Borrowdale ham costs $113.99 (five to 5.7 kilograms). Order online before December 14 for delivery or in-store collection.

Black Forest Smokehouse

If anyone knows pork it’s Black Forest Smokehouse, which uses recipes passed down through four generations to make its bacon, ham and cold-cuts. One of these recipes is in play with its plump Christmas hams, which are finished over ironbark for a delicately smoky flavour. There’s a free-range version available, too.

A whole leg of bone-in ham costs $130 for seven to eight kilograms, or $155 for nine to 10 kilograms. A bone-in half leg costs $80 (four to 4.5 kilograms). A whole free-range bone-in leg costs $200 for nine to 9.5 kilograms; a free-range half leg costs $100 for 4.5 kilograms. Order online for home delivery or in-store pick up.