Your Fail-Proof Ham Guide PLUS a Brown Sugar Glaze Recipe
Sound the alarm: Ham season is upon us!
Forested, heritage hog and naturally smoked traditional bone-in goodness.
Need a main course that's:
fuss-free?
already almost finished?
Feeds a crowd? (no worrying about running out!)
AND tastes amazing?
Ham.
That's right, everyone loves ham (a good one, anyway), and the possibilities for leftovers are endless!
(soup or scalloped potatoes? YUM!)!
But, something that we are always worried about is overcooking or drying it out.
Don't worry, I'm here to help!
One of the great things about a smoked ham is that it is already cooked. Hooray, you are almost already there!
All you really need to do now is heat it up!
(and flavor it up a little bit if you so choose)
The first thing that I do is preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
In order not to overcook and dry your beautiful ham out, you need to only bake it until it reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees.
That means that a ham that is baked, covered under foil, at 325 degrees should take about 12 minutes per pound to get there.
So for a standard 6 pound, bone-in ham, you are looking at about an hour and ten, to an hour and fifteen minutes. Not bad!
Another thing that you can do to insure a nice, juicy ham is to SCORE it.
The ham is covered by a gorgeous layer of flavorful, nutritious fat that you want to tap into!
By cutting in to it, it bastes the meat as it cooks, allows for any glaze that you might be using to penetrate into the meat a bit, and, it looks pretty!
Scoring:
I take a sharp knife, and, starting from the one side on the bottom, I make slices about 1/3” deep all the way across the ham at 1” intervals, making my way around the ham from one side, over the top, and to the other side.
When you have your slices all done in that direction, I turn the ham, and make diagonal slices in the other direction, all the way across the ham again.
It doesn't have to be perfect, no one notices!
If you are not going to glaze, pop that bad boy into the oven, covered tightly with foil, until about fifteen minutes from being done.
At that point, I take the ham out, crank the oven up to 425 degrees F, baste the ham with the pan juices, and put it back in the oven uncovered for the last fifteen minutes.
Done!
(For the juiciest results, wait fifteen minutes before slicing)
However, if you're a glaze kinda person like I am, follow these instructions and recipe that I have adapted from Spend with Pennies that has not let me down yet.
It is a mix of sweet brown sugar and orange juice (or pineapple or apple, whatever you got!), with tangy dijon mustard to keep it from being sickeningly sweet.
The end result is the perfect combo of sweet glaze and salty, smoky ham: A stunning, caramelized bone-in hunk of meat that will mesmerize your guests.
Easy Brown Sugar Ham Glaze
Note: Do not put the glaze on until the last fifteen minutes, or it will burn!
Ingredients:
1 scored ham with bone-in, approximately 6 pounds
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
¼ cup pineapple juice, or orange or apple juice
Brown Sugar Glaze Ingredients:
½ cup pineapple juice, or orange or apple juice
½ cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
pinch of ground cloves
2 teaspoons cornstarch
Steps:
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F and place your scored ham flat side down (fat side up) in a 9x13 baking dish
Rub it all over with ¼ cup of juice and 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard.
Cover tightly with foil and place it in the oven and bake for about an hour (or fifteen minutes shy of the time it would take it to come to 140 degrees F)
In a small saucepan, stir together the remaining ½ cup of juice, 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, the brown sugar, ginger and cloves, and the cornstarch.
Bring to a boil and simmer for two minutes to thicken, cool
Fifteen minutes before it is done, remove the ham from the oven, and crank your oven up to 425 degrees
Baste with the thickened glaze and bake it fifteen minutes more, uncovered
Take it out and let it rest for fifteen minutes before slicing, and enjoy!
