Baked Ham

Yup, ham. A big pile of ham.

Nothing special here, but it’s a family favorite and the left-overs alone make for great soups and omelets. Incredibly simple recipe, great flavor. We serve it about four times a year. Everyone wants a piece that was near one of the cloves.

Ingredients

1 Butt portion, fully cooked/smoked ham. Normal fare at a grocery store. Shoulder is OK.

1/4 cup honey (orange blossom is our favorite)

2 Tbs mustard

3 Tbs brown sugar

Whole cloves

Directions

We cut off the skin and fat from the top of the ham, and then slice the open face and the  top of the butt (the part you just cut the fat and skin from) with a diamond deep cut, about 1 1/5 inch grid. Then poke a clove into the center of each of the diamond cuts.

Mix the honey, mustard and brown sugar. Pour half of the mixture over the ham.

If you have a roasting pan with a grill,, use it. If not, just toss it into a big pan. Put about a cup of water into the pan. Put into a 350° oven for about 30 minutes to brown off the top of the ham. Then tent with aluminum foil and put back into the oven. In theory, about 15 minutes for each pound. About half-way through, pour on the rest of the glaze on the ham. Shoot for about 145° for the ham to be done. But, it’s fully cooked, so if you fall short, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t dry out your ham trying to bring it up to temperature, chances are you’ll just eat the outside (which will be plenty hot) and the rest will be left-overs.

Pull off the cloves before serving. Thin slices are best (in our opinion) rather than big chunks.

After dinner, we fill up a vacuum bag for one big dinner in the future and freeze it, one zip-lock quart bag for sandwiches and omelets in the following week and put the bone with A LOT of meat on it for a ham-bone soup in the next couple days.  Within the next month we’ll have a busy day, but want to have a nice home-cooked meal, and we’ll just toss the frozen pack in some boiling water with the following sides.

SIDES

The classic sides for the ham is our famous Foley Mashed Potatoes and Don’s Green Beans.  We’ll post those recipes on this site as well. We also like for a ‘veggie’ frozen petite peas or frozen kernel corn in a rush.