Top chef's simple tip for how long you can keep Christmas Day ham

There's a near certain guarantee that after Christmas Day the spirit of the festive season will linger on in the form of Christmas ham.

You know the drill. After it's carved and shared with loved ones, the ham is returned to the fridge, where it lays in wait ready for post-Christmas left over meals. 

But just how long can you keep Christmas ham?

READ MORE: What to do with your Christmas dinner leftovers

Award-winning Australian chef, author and restaurateur, Curtis Stone, tells 9honey Kitchen the answer depends on a few factors.

He says the first thing to check is the hams used by date. It's best to do this before you cook or slice it.

"It's a good idea to mark that down because sometimes you'll have a look at that and you'll open the ham and then you'll forget," Stone, the fresh food and recipes ambassador for Coles Supermarkets, says.

"But you might have gotten a couple of weeks shelf life on it or maybe more and that's a great thing."

When faced with leftover ham, Stone admits he doesn't immediately pop it back in the fridge.

"I kind of feel like you'll use it less if every time you think about it, you've got to pull out this big old ham and you've got to slice it again," he says. 

"So what I do is I go ahead and process the whole thing. So I'll slice a certain amount, I'll dice a certain amount of or I'll shave it nice and thin."

He uses the ham in salads, fried rice, a risotto with some peas or sandwiches 

"Sandwiches are wonderful. That's what you'd be slicing it for, if you dice you'd use it in a scrambled egg," he says.

READ MORE: Food experts' tips to make Christmas leftovers last longer in the fridge

He believes prepping the ham for leftovers will save you in the long run. 

"It cuts your decision making down. It makes life easier for you when you go back to the fridge and see it that way," he says.

Stone says Christmas hams bought as bone-in ham can also be used to make a delicious leftover dish.

"That makes a beautiful soup - split peas," he says. 

"Throwing that whole chunk of ham in a bunch of water then you boil that away and then that'll permeate the flavor of that smoked ham will sort of go through.

"And we've got beautiful smoked Beechwood hams this year. You can get the single smoked, the double or the triple smoked from Coles and the triple smoked is just so rich in flavour it makes the most delicious soups."

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