This time of year, turkey gets a lot of attention. But let’s be real, turkey is massively overrated. It's dry. It’s flavorless. And cooking it wrong can burn down your house.

Enter: ham, the oft-forgot holiday centerpiece that packs a hardier punch when it comes to flavor, juiciness, and color.

Although most Americans associate ham with a large slab of cured pork, ham is a catch-all term for the cut of meat taken from the chunky part of a pig’s hind leg. But the curing process that transforms it from a generic piece of pork into a quintessential holiday ham is deeply rooted in science. From ham’s bold flavor to its rosy hue and admirable shelf life, “there's a lot of chemistry that's going on,” Wes Osburn, an associate professor of animal science at Texas A&M University, tells Inverse.

Black Friday is officially just hours away, and BDG’s commerce editors have done all the hard work for you. All you need to do is click “add to cart” before these notable markdowns across every Amazon category sell out.