Prepare to impress your guests with this incredible Honey Mustard Glazed Ham recipe, a cherished holiday tradition that promises juicy, perfectly seasoned slices with an irresistible caramelized crust every time. Our unique simmer-and-roast cooking method is the secret to unlocking unparalleled flavor and tenderness, making it the ideal centerpiece for any festive gathering.
The Ultimate Honey Mustard Glazed Ham: A Holiday Tradition
There are certain recipes that define family holidays, and for as long as I can remember, my mother’s holiday ham has been one of them. It’s more than just a dish; it’s a culinary cornerstone of our Easter brunches, Christmas dinners, and New Year’s Day feasts. Guests consistently rave about its exceptional flavor and perfect texture, making it the undisputed star of our festive table.
This isn’t just any ham recipe; it’s the gold standard I grew up with. My mother perfected a distinctive two-part cooking technique, which we’ll explore in detail, that consistently delivers tender, succulent ham slices that are never overpoweringly salty. The brilliance lies in its ability to balance rich ham flavor with a captivating sweetness, ensuring every bite is a delight.
The culinary journey culminates with a rich, caramelized honey mustard-bourbon glaze. This easy-to-prepare holiday ham achieves a harmonious blend of sweet and savory notes, transforming a simple cut of meat into a gourmet experience. Whether presented artfully sliced on a grand platter or carved tableside with flair, this Honey Mustard Glazed Ham ensures a truly beautiful presentation for any holiday brunch or dinner celebration. Its golden-brown exterior and inviting aroma are guaranteed to entice and impress all your guests.
Searching for the perfect sweet ending? Our family’s beloved Easter dessert is this delightful Carrot Cake with Orange Curd, an ideal complement to the rich flavors of the ham!
Selecting the Perfect Ham for Your Holiday Feast
Navigating the ham section at your local grocery store can sometimes feel overwhelming, with a variety of options ranging from fresh cuts to fully cured and smoked, and those convenient spiral-sliced versions. To achieve the sublime taste and texture of our Honey Mustard Glazed Ham, making the right choice is crucial.
For this specific recipe, you’ll need a fully-cooked, bone-in, wet-cured (or wet-cured and smoked) half ham that is NOT spiral-sliced. These are often referred to as “city hams.” This particular type of ham provides the best canvas for our unique cooking method, allowing for maximum flavor absorption and moisture retention. Avoid fresh hams, which require much longer cooking times and different preparation methods. Similarly, while spiral-sliced hams offer convenience, their pre-cut nature can lead to dryness during our simmering process, as the individual slices are more exposed.
When selecting a bone-in cured ham, you’ll typically find two main portions: the butt portion and the shank portion. Our family has always favored the butt portion, and for good reason. The shank, identifiable by its tapered end and cut from the lower part of the leg, tends to be tougher and less tender than the butt portion. The butt portion offers a more consistent texture and is generally easier to carve, making it a superior choice for a holiday centerpiece.
For an even deeper dive into ham selection, explore: How to Buy a Ham from Fine Cooking, an excellent resource for comprehensive guidance.
Calculating Ham Portions and Embracing Leftovers
When planning for your holiday gathering, a good rule of thumb for a bone-in ham is to account for approximately 3/4 pound per person. This ensures generous servings while also leaving room for those coveted leftovers. For instance:
- To serve 10 guests, aim for a 7.5 to 8-pound ham.
- For 12 guests, a 9-pound ham is ideal.
- Hosting 16 guests? A 12-pound ham will be perfectly sufficient.
Of course, buying a ham slightly larger than your calculations allows for ample leftovers, which are a holiday bonus in themselves! We particularly enjoy transforming our leftover ham into delicious Deviled Ham, a versatile spread perfect for sandwiches or appetizers.
Ensuring Food Safety: Reheating Guidelines
Since you’ll be starting with a fully-cooked ham, the primary goal of the cooking process is reheating it to a safe internal temperature. According to food safety guidelines, fully-cooked hams should reach an internal temperature of 140 degrees F before serving. Our unique simmer-and-roast method typically requires between 15 to 20 minutes per pound to achieve this ideal temperature and texture.
Don’t discard that precious ham bone after carving! It’s the flavorful foundation for an absolutely fantastic Split Pea Soup, turning your holiday leftovers into another heartwarming meal.
The Masterful Technique: Simmered and Roasted Honey Ham
One of the most common complaints about holiday hams is their excessive saltiness. While a touch of salty flavor provides a delightful contrast to a sweet glaze, an overly salty ham can be truly overpowering, leaving guests constantly reaching for their water glasses. Our goal is a perfectly balanced ham – flavorful, moist, and never too salty.
The true secret behind my mother’s legendary Honey Mustard Glazed Ham lies in its ingenious two-stage cooking process. This method meticulously works to remove excess salt, tenderize the meat to an unbelievable degree, and ensure every slice remains incredibly juicy and succulent from edge to bone.
The Simmering Stage: Desalting and Tenderizing
The journey begins by gently simmering the ham in a fragrant mixture of honey, brown sugar, and water. This initial braising step is transformative. The liquid doesn’t simply cook the ham; it actively counteracts and draws out the inherent saltiness from the cured meat. Importantly, this process does not make the ham itself overly sweet. Instead, it creates a perfectly seasoned foundation, allowing the exterior glaze to provide that ultimate sweet-spicy crust later on.
Unlike many braising liquids that can be repurposed into flavorful stocks or soups, the liquid used for simmering this ham serves a very specific purpose: extracting salt. Consequently, this braising liquid becomes exceptionally salty and also quite sweet, limiting its usefulness in other culinary applications. The braising liquid from this recipe should always be discarded. This ensures that you’re not inadvertently reintroducing unwanted saltiness or an unbalanced sweetness into future dishes.
Given that the simmering liquid will be discarded, there’s no need to splurge on expensive artisanal honey for this stage. The most economical yet good-tasting house brand honey available at your local grocery store or warehouse club is perfectly sufficient. Save your gourmet honey for the glaze itself, where its nuanced flavors can truly shine.
The Roasting Stage: Glazing to Perfection
Once the ham has been simmered to ideal tenderness and seasoned internally, it moves to the roasting stage. This is where the magic of the glaze comes in, transforming the ham’s exterior into a glistening, caramelized masterpiece. The high heat of the oven, combined with multiple layers of our special glaze, creates that desirable sticky, slightly crisp crust that is the hallmark of a truly outstanding holiday ham.
Crafting the Irresistible Honey Mustard Bourbon Ham Glaze
The glaze for this holiday ham is remarkably simple to prepare, yet it delivers an intensely flavorful and beautifully caramelized finish that elevates the entire dish. Our recipe incorporates both smooth and whole grain Dijon mustards, providing a complex depth of flavor and appealing textural contrast. When these mustards are blended with golden honey, rich brown sugar, a subtle hint of warm ground cloves, and a splash of bourbon, the result is a glaze truly worthy of any grand holiday celebration.
The Art of Scoring Your Ham
For both an elegant presentation and to maximize flavor absorption into the meat, we recommend scoring the ham after it has completed its simmering stage. Scoring the ham beforehand can sometimes cause the meat’s shape to “blossom” too much during the initial cooking. Scoring post-simmering allows for better control and a cleaner diamond pattern.
To score a ham, use a very sharp knife to make shallow cuts, about 1-inch apart, in a diamond grid pattern across the fatty exterior of the ham. These cuts should penetrate only the fat layer, not deeply into the meat itself. This technique not only creates an attractive pattern but also provides more surface area for the glaze to adhere to and caramelize, infusing the outer layer of the ham with incredible flavor.
For a visual guide and more detailed instructions on this technique, consult: How to Score a Ham from Better Homes and Gardens.
Glaze Application and Serving Suggestions
This Honey Mustard Glazed Ham recipe yields enough glaze to generously coat a ham weighing up to 13 pounds with three distinct layers. If you’re preparing a smaller ham, don’t let any leftover glaze go to waste! It can be beautifully brushed or drizzled over individual ham slices when serving, adding an extra burst of that delightful sweet and savory flavor.
For those who love extra sauce, I often double the glaze recipe. This allows me to offer a small bowl of warm glaze on the side, perfect for guests to add more to their plates at the dinner table or brunch buffet, enhancing their personalized ham experience.
Perfect Pairings: Side Dish Ideas to Serve with Honey Mustard Glazed Ham
A magnificent holiday ham deserves equally impressive side dishes. Here are some fantastic options that beautifully complement the sweet and savory notes of our Honey Mustard Glazed Ham, ensuring a truly unforgettable feast:
- Haricots Verts with Lemon-Herb Brown Butter: Delicate French green beans tossed in a rich, nutty brown butter with bright lemon and fragrant herbs provide a fresh, vibrant contrast to the ham.
- Hedgehog Roasted Rosemary Potatoes: Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, these intricately cut and roasted potatoes offer a savory, herb-infused bite that pairs wonderfully with the ham’s sweetness.
- Easy Creamy Scalloped Potatoes: Layers of tender potatoes baked in a rich, creamy sauce provide a comforting and indulgent side that’s a classic with ham.
- Parmesan Duchess Potatoes: Elegant, piped mounds of mashed potatoes enriched with Parmesan cheese offer a sophisticated and flavorful accompaniment.
- Roasted Carrots with Honey and Garlic: Sweet, caramelized carrots with a hint of garlic echo the honey notes in the ham glaze, creating a harmonious and vibrant vegetable side.
- Classic Dinner Rolls: A basket of warm, fluffy dinner rolls is essential for soaking up any delicious juices or serving alongside the ham.
- Fresh Green Salad: A simple mixed green salad with a light vinaigrette provides a refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the main course.
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Honey Mustard Glazed Ham
Ingredients
To Simmer The Ham
- 1 gallon water , plus additional, if needed
- 1 cup honey
- ½ cup light brown sugar , lightly packed
- 8 to 13 pound wet-cured, fully-cooked half ham (bone-in, butt portion; smoked or unsmoked, see note*)
To Glaze and Roast the Ham
- ½ cup honey
- ½ cup light brown sugar , lightly packed
- ¼ cup Dijon mustard (such as Maille or Fallot)
- 2 tablespoons whole grain mustard (I use Maille Old Style)
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ cup bourbon
Instructions
- In a large, 12-quart stock pot, stir together water, honey, and light brown sugar until dissolved. Rinse ham and lower it into in the stock pot, adding additional water, if needed, to just cover the ham. (If a corner sticks out of the water on a very large ham, this is ok.)
- Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low to just maintain a bubble, and simmer, partially covered, until thickest portion of the ham registers 125-degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. Plan on about 15-20 minutes per pound.
Glaze and Roast the Ham
- While the ham is simmering, stir together all of the glaze ingredients in a high-sided saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until sugars are dissolved and glaze is thickened slightly, about 8-10 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet or roasting pan with foil and fit it with a rack.
- Carefully remove ham from the cooking liquid. (I like to pour some of the water into the sink before lifting the ham out with two turkey forks.) Discard the remaining liquid.
- Place the ham on the prepared rack and score by using a sharp knife to cut a shallow diamond pattern into the fat, spacing the cuts about 1-inch apart.
- Brush the entire exterior of the ham with the glaze. Roast for 10 minutes. Add a second coat of glaze and roast for an additional 10 minutes. Brush the ham with a third and final coat of glaze, roasting the ham for 10 more minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 135-138 degrees F.**
- Remove ham from oven, tent with foil, and let rest for 15 minutes (internal temperature will rise 5 degrees during this time to 140). Transfer ham to a cutting board and carve against the grain into 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick slices.
Notes
**If desired, you can caramelize the glaze further by broiling it for 5 minutes at the end of the roasting time. Keep a careful eye so that the sugars don’t burn.
Nutrition Estimate
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Please note that our recipes have been developed using the US Customary measurement system and have not been tested for high altitude/elevation cooking and baking.