Amish Ham Loaf

This post features a classic homemade Amish ham loaf recipe. Homemade ham loaf is a favorite on the menu in most Amish communities around the holidays. Most Amish don't have a Honeybaked Ham store nearby so they'll dip into their own supply of home-butchered pork, which includes ham, sausage, pork chops, and other cuts.

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Fresh Pork is a Farmhouse Favorite!
🙋 FAQ
🐖 Ham Loaf Ingredients
📋 Instructions
🥩 Additional Meatloaf Recipes
🥩Additional Loaf Recipes
🖨️ Full Recipe Amish Ham Loaf

Fresh Pork is a Farmhouse Favorite!

Hog butchering in most Amish settlements is done during the late winter. It's a messy, hot job that you wouldn't want to do in the middle of July, that is for sure. Most Amish do their butchering as a family, but some Amish churches make it a church-wide activity. This is a great description of the event from Gloria:

They plan to spend several days with Daniel’s brother John and his family before returning to our house for the following weekend. Tuesday and Wednesday will be the big butchering days for our church. There are 21 hogs to be turned to sausage, bologna, bacon, kielbasa, liverwurst, and the likes. It’s a major undertaking, yet many hands make work light.

The assortment of jobs is large enough that most folks can find something they are comfortable with doing, even if they aren’t fond of butchering itself. Besides the actual butchering, there is mixing pork with seasoning, then packaging the seemingly endless stream of huge bowls and totes of sausage or marking packages. Then there is always a need of hearts who are willing to scrub sticky canners and totes for hours — literally! Then there is always the need for serving the food we ladies had prepared the days before.

Oh yes, I think I forgot to mention the butchering event is hosted here at our woodworking shop since it has the needed space for all the grinders, stuffers, our 80 church folks, and so on.

🙋 FAQ

Can Amish Ham Loaf be made with other meats?

Yes, ground hamburger, turkey, elk, sausage, all of these can be ground and blended for some pretty fantastic flavor blends! Ground beef can be blended with ground pork for a super loaf!

An Amish homemaker typically has a pretty ready supply of meats on hand and they know how to stretch it’s use. In most Amish settlements, the meats are your typical chicken and beef. In some of the Amish settlements I have visited out west elk and even bear meat is common. Bear or elk meat can be blended with hamburger to take the edge off the “gamey” taste and stretch the meat supply. Here is a good ham loaf recipe using a blend of ground meats. This comes from an Amish woman in Millersburg, Ohio. As is typical of Amish recipes the instructions are a little sparse, but I think most of you will be able to figure it out.

This type of ham loaf is also a very common part of Lancaster county cooking among the Amish in Pennsylvania. Typical of Amish cooking, the glaze on this ham isn't like a pineapple glaze or some other fruit, most Amish glazes tend to be sweet, sugar with vinegar to balance it out. You could even add some ketchup to this brown sugar glaze. Because of how common this type of ham loaf is in the region, some would refer to this as a classic Pennsylvania Dutch ham loaf.

Most Amish wouldn't use an electric food processor to grind, but you can! Most Amish would use a hand-cranked meat grinder, a long and laborious process. If you want much faster ground ham, or meat mixture blend, use your food processor.

You can grind it into this....

This is everything before you mix it all up with a wooden spoon in a large mixing bowl , shape it, and put it into the oven. If you don't have crackers, you could use bread crumbs as a substitute. The crackers work slightly better, but breadcrumbs would be fine. You could vary it by using graham crackers (crumbs) also. If you want a little bit more crunch, you can add some diced celery, carrots, onions, or red bell pepper to this ham loaf. A little dry mustard could be added for bit of tang.

And then plate it and pair it with some vegetables. As you can see, the ham loaf slices very well! The sauce acts as a glaze that just makes this dish superb. If you have any left over glaze or sauce, you can pour sauce over the ham loaf or dip the ham loaf in it. Superb! The leftover ham loaf can be frozen and stored for future meals or enjoyed for several days after.

Instead of cracker crumbs, oatmeal can also be used. And if you are not worried about sodium, you can sprinkle some sea salt into the loaf mixture. It gives the same basic texture. This Amish ham loaf is so good you probably won't have leftovers!