Ham

HAM! Love ham. I had four calls from family members this Easter.."How do I cook my ham? The same way I cook a turkey?" The answer is Nooooo!
Just remember that ham is waaaay different than turkey because ham is pre-cooked and cured. Whether it is smoke cured or honey/sugar cured, it can be eaten directly from the package cold. Therefore, all you want to do with a ham is heat it through. My family hates an overdone ham!

I always buy a spiral sliced honey ham with a glaze packet. I heat the ham through at 325 degrees for 2 hours, check it, and usually go another hour. Then I glaze it.

I have tried a few different glazes and always come back to one that I made up. Take the glaze packet and empty into a bowl. Add up to a cup of brown sugar, a pinch of cloves, maybe a little allspice, and about a quarter cup of pineapple juice. Mix up to make a sort of paste. Baste your ham with the juices in the bottom of the pan, then remove most of the "ham juice". (Reserve it for your gravy OR freeze it in ice cube trays to use later in recipes as ham broth).

Smear the glaze paste all over the ham and return to the oven for at least 10 minutes. It will heat up and melt and will ooze down into the spiral slices.

If anyone has figured out a crunchy glaze, let me know. This paste glaze is what I came up with while trying to make a crunchy glaze that stays crunchy on the ham surface, but I haven't been successful.......YET. :) Happy hamming.