Monday, December 28, 2015

Baking a Ham with too many recipes. It still turned out well!

For Christmas dinner I wanted to bake a ham. Normally Doug grills a prime rib roast on the charcoal grill but we weren't sure we wanted to hang around too much on Christmas day. I'd been on about a ham anyway so we had ridden to Jones Country Meats and picked up a 12-pounder.

Here it is. Christmas Day Baked Ham

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Anyway......fast forward to the planning. We decided when the ham needed to go in the oven but I had not earmarked any particular recipe. Bad planning, right? I wrote out the recipe for a nice glaze involving apple cider, maple syrup, apple jelly, allspice and more. We went to the grocery store and I discovered I had left the list on the table. Trying to remember everything on the list we grabbed what we needed.

Except the apple jelly. Didn't know this until Christmas day - about a half hour before we planned to pop it in the oven. Great.

So we abandoned the idea of that particular glaze and searched around on the Internet for other ways to cook and glaze a ham. Ought to be simple, right? Holy cow, there are so many variations on cook times and glazes. Enough to make you drink. Which we did...later on.

Some recipes call for 15 minutes per pound, some 20 and some 22 minutes per pound. That can make a difference. In the end I made a brown sugar and maple syrup glaze. I also overcooked the ham by 45 minutes. It was still good but would have been better (I think) if I had pulled it out earlier.

The two of us shared a nice meal and it honestly was good. We served it with roasted sweet potato and blue lake green beans.

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Next time I bake a smoked ham, I am going with 15 minutes per pound and then coating the ham with a glaze after an hour. Live and learn! I now have lots of apple cider to dispose of......I wonder if that would be good heated up, sipped as we sit by a fire outside?

This is my Christmas Ham story and I will add this link to my meal planning....that ought to post by Saturday.

How was your Christmas? Food? Friends and family? Did you have a good time? I hope so.

I am sharing this with Beth Fish's Weekend Cooking Series.



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12 comments:

  1. Sounds like my Christmas turkey story. The ham looks yummy, as do the sweet potatoes and green beans.

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    1. Thank you, Vicki! I would like to hear your turkey story 😃

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  2. We went with the prime rib for Christmas dinner. Why oh why I'm not sure. Marion barely ate anything and I have not been eating beef lately these days. I sure dug into the mashed potatoes though. Watching my diet means no mashed potatoes with milk and lots of butter. I threw caution to the wind on Christmas though and enjoyed every morsel of potatoes, lol...

    Your ham doesn't look dry at all Tina. I'm forever jotting down recipes and then combining them. However, leaving the list on the table often causes the same conundrum. Warming up some apple cider will solve all problems with a dab of whiskey even better, lol...

    Wishing you and Doug a very Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year Tina! "See" you next year!!!

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  3. Thank you Louise! We usually join you with prime rib but this year we did it differently. It's great to see you posting again, I was just over at your site.

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  4. Great story! And yes, that cider would be awesome heated and spiced, with or without the rum or whiskey. :)

    Happy new year!

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    1. BFR I added this to my meal planning post too. Definitely not going to waste that cider.

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  5. Really quick way to bake ham is using a can of coke! Love ham and love sweet potatoes.

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  6. We do a ham for Christmas as well. Well for Christmas Eve as I do not cook on Christmas! I did a small ham yesterday but since my sister-in-law always does the Christmas ham I had to wing it about 10 minutes before it went in the oven. I did a mix of butter and brown sugar and it actually turned out pretty good! Your sweet potatoes look amazing. I've seen tons of amazing looking recipes for mulled apple cider and what not on Pinterest. I'm sure you'll make great use of it!

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  7. Hi Tina. Happy New Year. I did a ham for New Year - I enjoy experimenting with glazes - this time I did honey, mustard, horseradish and cayenne - and sat the ham in a bath of beer - it turned out just fine - other times I've used marmalade in the glaze. Cheers from Carole's Chatter!

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  8. This sounds like something I would do! I experimented with ham this Christmas, too. Having seen a blog post about cooking a holiday ham in a Crock Pot, I thought great idea, because we needed to bring a main dish to my parents' house. Come time to shop for Christmas food, I couldn't find the blog post again. Found one that I thought was it, but by then had already bought a spiral ham. The smallest I could find, but it was still too large for the Crock Pot. Hubby had to slice off the bottom third of it for me and I think I was supposed to use a boneless ham to begin with. It turned out OK, but ended up cooking too long because I was too lazy to deal with it after dinner was over and left it in the Crock Pot!

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  9. Jackie, I have heard of the Coke version but never tried it. Thanks for stopping by and I will get that can of Coke!

    Katherine, I always forget about Pinterest but need to go look. I used the brown sugar too, it was great.

    Carole, happy new year to you too! I have some good mustard and will try using it on leftovers.

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