There’s a memorial service later today at my church – one of our members has lost his battle with leukemia. I volunteered to help prepare food for the luncheon. The coordinator suggested I make some small sandwiches – ham, roast beef, whatever.
In thinking back to any number of post-funeral lunches I’ve attended, I have to say, one constant is that there are always ham salad sandwiches. At least in Pennsylvania there are! Now, I don’t have a ham salad recipe from either of my grandmas, but that’s probably because this is one recipe that everyone just knows how to make. Or at least, everyone of a certain generation did.
So, I went looking on the internet, and I found this one from Paula Deen, which is exactly who I expected would have a good ham salad recipe. The good thing about meat salads is, you don’t have to follow the recipe exactly in order for it to turn out good. You can eyeball and estimate instead of painstakingly measuring the ingredients. I doubled this, and then some. I substituted sweet pickle relish instead of the hot pickles Paula suggests. I will be spreading it on small dinner rolls for the luncheon.
HAM SALAD – from PaulaDeen.com
Ingredients:
2 cups leftover ham, chopped in a food processor
1 cup finely diced celery
1/4 cup finely minced sweet onion
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 hard-boiled eggs, diced
1/4 cup hot pickle relish, drained
1/2 cup mayonnaise
Directions
Mix all ingredients until well blended.
Serve on crackers or bread as a sandwich.
My Grandmas' Recipes 
Once upon a time, I used a meat grinder to make ham salad — because that’s the way my mom did it. Once I discovered Cuisinart food processors, I learned that was the only way to go! The end result is the same, plus all the pieces of the food processor can go into the dishwasher. Not so with meat grinders.
Very authentic recipe. I also substituted sweet pickle relish for the hot peppers.
we had a meat grinder too, RMW, and my mom would clamp it to the side of the counter to grind up ham for this very purpose.
My mom made this with a meat grinder. My grandfather was a butcher and made his own balogna and she made bologna salad with homemade balogna..
It was wonderful!