Can You Freeze Pre
Yes, you can freeze a pre-cooked ham.
I suggest cutting your ham up into smaller portions and freezing it in airtight containers or freezer bags with aluminum foil that way it’s easier to get those smaller portions out and re-heat them.
When it’s time to re-heat, just make sure you have plenty of time for thawing, especially if you’re thawing a big, huge ham.
Keep in mind, according to the USDA, you can store a spiral-cut ham or ham leftovers in the fridge for about 3 to 5 days and you can freeze them for about 1 to 2 months.
Our Test Kitchen Experts Share Their Best Tips And Tricks For How To Cook A Ham For Holidays And Special Occasions You’ve Got This
Looking to make a picture-perfect glazed ham for your Easter dinner? Good idea! Ham is less stressful to prepare than many other roasted meats because most are sold already cooked .
All you need to do is reheat and finish it off with a tasty glaze. Our Test Kitchen pros show you how its done, with their best tips and a recipe to boot.
Brown Sugar Ham Glaze Recipe
A ham glaze recipe should include something sweet brown sugar, sugar, honey, maple syrup, etc. which will promote good caramelization in the oven. There is no need to glaze the ham throughout the entire cooking process during the last 30 minutes will suffice and will leave the ham beautifully burnished.
To make this glaze, stir together:
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
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Ideas For Other Glazes
The two glazes we used are both honey-based, though you could use other things for a sweetened glaze, such as pineapple juice, marmalade, or maple syrup. Also try our recipes for Cranberry Glazed Ham or Brown Sugar Glazed Ham.
Do you have a favorite glazed ham glaze? If so, please let us know about it in the comments.
What Temp Should Ham Be Cooked To
NOTE: Set oven temperature to 325 °F. Cook all raw fresh ham and ready-to-eat ham to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F as measured with a food thermometer before removing meat from the heat source. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming.
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Tips From The Pillsbury Kitchens
- tip 1 Cross-hatching the ham’s surface before applying the glaze ensures that the ham catches as much glaze as possible. This glaze also works on your favorite boneless ham.
- tip 2 Make your ham extra special with a delicious twist by adding your favorite fruit preserves or juice to your glaze.
- tip 3 Not sure how much ham to make for your dinner party? Generally, planning for 1/2 pound of ham per person is a good rule to follow. Some guests may eat more, some eat less, but this rule should help your planning. For example, if you are serving 12 people, a six-pound ham should be plenty!
- tip 4 This baked ham recipe calls for bone-in ham. Bone-in ham tends to have more flavor than boneless ham. And, as a bonus, you can use the bone to make soup, like our Easy Slow-Cooker Ham Bone Soup!
How To Roast Ham
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A well-cooked ham is the kind of holiday or party dish you remember forever. Roasting is a simple cooking method, since all you’ll need to do is put the ham on a tray and stick it in the oven. The length of cooking time depends on the type of ham you purchased and its size. Add a glaze to provide different flavors and enjoy a juicy slice of ham.
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Different Type Of Fresh Ham Roast Recipe:
Often you see a thin cut ham thats large in diameter at the grocery store. This cut of ham roast was cut from up high on the hind leg, where the leg is the widest. These kinds of ham roast cuts are really good stuffed or rolled with filling. Roll this ham up with a stuffing recipe, wrap it with cooking twine, season with salt and ground black pepper, and baked it in the oven!
This type of ham, fresh ham roasts, does not need to be marinated. Just brine for best results!
How To Bake A Ham
Most of the time when you purchase ham, its been smoked which means its cooked. Be sure to check the package of your ham to see if it says fully cooked .
A fully cooked ham needs to be cooked to 140°F where as a cook before eating ham needs to be cooked to 160°F.
When cooking ham, youll want to preheat your oven and place the ham cut side down.
Cover the ham in foil and crimp the foil around your roasting pan to seal it. Brush with the brown sugar ham glaze before it finishes baking.
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How Long To Bake Ham
How long to cook a ham depends on the weight and type of ham. Use these guidelines for how long to bake ham for your special occasion:
Boneless cooked ham
- 1½ to 3 pounds bake ¾ to 1¼ hours until 140°F
- 3 to 5 pounds bake 1 to 1¾ hours until 140°F
- 6 to 8 pounds bake 1¾ to 2½ hours until 140°F
- 8 to 10 pounds* bake 2¼ to 2¾ hours until 140°F
Bone-in cooked ham
- 6 to 8 pounds bake 1½ to 2¼ hours until 140°F
- 14 to 16 pounds* bake 2¾ to 3¾ hours until 140°F
Bone-in ham
- 3 to 5 pounds bake 1¾ to 3 hours until 150°F
- 7 to 8 pounds bake 2½ to 3¼ hours until 150°F
- 14 to 16 pounds* bake 4 to 5¼ hours until 150°F
*Note: Hams weighing more than 8 pounds should be loosely covered with foil halfway through roasting.
How To Cook Ham In The Oven
Ham is traditionally baked in the oven. Cook for approximately 15 to 20 minutes per pound at 300 F. No matter the size of the ham and the temperature of the oven, it should be cooked until the internal temperature reaches 140 F. Covering with foil throughout the cooking process keeps it moist. If applying a glaze, do so in the last 30 minutes of baking so it will caramelize and not burn. Rest ham for 15 minutes before slicing. A half a ham will serve approximately 20 people.
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Recipes Worthy Of Your Leftover Ham
Theres something so iconic, so sentimental about a shiny, glistening Maple Glazed Ham taking pride of place in the centre of a festive table. Its completely incomparable to the ham slices slapped between sandwich bread that you get over deli counters. I even know people who hate deli ham who go nuts over Glazed Ham.
Plus, as I said right up front, this is easy, easy, easy! Its also make ahead or prepare ahead, is fabulous served warm OR at room temperature. Oh and wait until you see the VIDEO!!! Nagi x
New to Glazed Ham? Start here -> Guide: How to Make Glazed Ham.
Set The Oven To Broil Bake For 10 More Minutes
Nowdoesnt that look absolutely delicious. See how much of a difference that little extra mustard and brown sugar, along with broiling it another 10 minutes makes. You just dont want to let the sugar begin to burn. It would be a shame to get this far along and burn the Glaze during that final 10 minutes. Again, oven temperatures will vary so keep a close eye on it during this time.
Are you hungry yet? I know my photography skills need a lot of work and improvement but this just makes me hungry to look at it.
Im going to give you a few steps further on how to CARVE your Baked Picnic Ham once its ready to serve. Of course, by this time, the meat has had its needed three minutes to rest. OK, its actually had about 15 minutes by this time. I needed to cut out a few slices for the final presentation so heres what I did.
Starting on the smaller end of the meat, slightly angle your knife and cut down to the bone. Were going to basically cut a V-shape in it.
Move the knife and angle it in the opposite direction, slice it again, down to the bone.
Remove the wedge shape youve cut and set it aside.
Use a fork to help hold the meat, then make several angled slices at the thickness you desire, moving on back towards the larger end of the picnic ham. Cut them down to the bone on each slice.
Run the knife along the bottom of each slice and the top of the bone to cut the slices free. Then, remove each slice and place on your serving platter.
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How To Carve A Bone
Place the ham on its flattest side. If there isn’t a flat side, use a carving knife to slice off a small piece of ham from the bottom so the ham will sit flat. Cut slices down to the bone, then cut along the bone to release the slices.
Figuring out how to carve a ham that doesn’t have a bone? Simply slice it. There’s not a thing to worry about here except maybe making sure you have a carving knife and fork to hold everything still.
Ways To Keep A Spiral Ham From Drying Out
There are a few specific steps you can take to keep a fully cooked ham from drying out while it’s baking
- Like I mentioned above, save ham juices from packaging, and pour them into the bottom of the pan this will help your ham to stay moist.
- You can put a little less than a cup of water or some kind of stock/broth in the bottom of the pan before baking if you want. This will also add moisture.
- Covering your ham with foil helps it to retain moisture, as well. Of course, you can also bake it in a roasting bag.
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Baked Ham Best Practices
- Cook 10 minutes a pound at 325ºF.
- Cook fat-side up in a roasting pan filled with about 1/2 inch of water covered tightly in foil for the bulk of the time.
- During the last 30 minutes, remove the foil, crank the heat up to 425ºF, brush with a simple glaze at least twice.
- Let rest 20 minutes before carving.
How To Cook Your Ham In A Slow Cooker
Slow cooking a whole ham creates a super-moist, wonderfully tender ham. It’s also a great method when you’re feeding a huge holiday crowd: pop a turkey in the oven and a ham in the slow cooker, and you’re set. This 5-star recipe for Slow Cooker Ham calls for a respectable 8-pound bone-in picnic ham. Other cooks have had success with a 9-pound spiral-cut honey-cured ham.
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How To Carve A Ham
TMB Studio
Carving a ham can seem like tricky business, but with only one large bone to work around youll likely find that this is a much simpler process than slicing up your Thanksgiving turkey . Follow our guide on how to carve a ham for best results, and then break out your favorite serving tray for a perfect presentation.
How Do You Make The Best Baked Ham
For this honey baked ham recipe, youre going to start by placing your ham in pineapple juice. The acid from the fruit keeps the ham juicy and moist while baking, creating incredible flavours to mix through with the glaze as you baste.
Glaze and baste every 15 minutes until you get the fat rendered and crispy on the outside!
I wish there was smell-ernet happening right about now, because juicy, tender Honey Baked Ham smells just as good as it looks.
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How To Cook Fresh Ham
If you bought a fresh ham from your butcher, youll want to give it a brine overnight, much like you would a whole turkey, and then continue on to cook it much like you would a traditional ham. The USDA recommends cooking raw hams to a minimum temperature of 145 degrees F. Check out Food Network Kitchen’s Roasted Fresh Ham with Cider Glaze.
How To Flavor Ham
Now for the dressing up part. I flavor my ham with a relatively classic orange marmalade glaze modernized with a little fresh thyme. If you have a glaze, sauce, basting mixture, or seasoning that you like, you can absolutely use my cooking method for that, too.
Anything with a decent amount of sweetness is also conducive to crispy edges on the outside of the ham. And here again, theres an advantage to spiral-slicedmore nooks and crannies for the flavoring to seep into.
And thats all you need to know to cook ham like a pro. Christine 🙂
- ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
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How Do You Make The Best Ham Glaze
The best glaze for a baked ham contain either honey, brown sugar or maple syrup. The saltiness from the ham and the sweetness from the glaze complement each other so well that either of those ingredients make for a pretty special glaze.
For this honey baked ham, youre going to use butter, honey and a hint of brown sugar. The acid of the pineapple juice balances out the sweetness from the honey, while the saltiness in the ham provides another layer of flavour.
From here you can add in spices like the traditional ground cinnamon. I dont normally add whole cloves to the outside of our ham, but for this recipe they work.
How Do You Heat Ham
You can heat your ham any number of waysin the oven, on the grill, using a slow cooker, you name it. I like to do a variation of my How to Roast Pork Perfectly method using something like the reverse sear techniquewarm it relatively low and slow, then finish it with a blast of heat to get those delicious, crispy, caramelized edges.
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How Long It Takes To Cook A Precooked Ham
Let’s talk about cooking time and internal temperature for a minute.
Always be sure to look at the packaging instructions for your specific ham, and follow what it says for cook time.
This spiral ham came from Aldi, and it said 12 to 15 minutes per pound. So being a 10-pound ham, it needed to cook for about 2 hours or more, but not too long or it’ll dry out.
An 8-pound ham would take about 96+ minutes to bake. A 12-pound ham, 144+ minutes. And so on and so forth.
According to the USDA, spiral-cut cooked hams that were packaged in processing plants under USDA inspection must be heated to 140 °F as measured with a food thermometer . Cook-before-eating hams or fresh hams must reach 145 °F to be safely cooked before serving. Read more of their Ham and Food Safety instructions.
How Do You Cook A Boneless Ham
This is the really easy part. All you have to do is set the ham in a baking dish with some water and cover it. It steams and heats in the oven for about an hour, I usually do 15 minutes per pound.
Now, you can stop right there. The ham is pre-cooked, as Ive mentioned, and its totally safe to eat at this point. But, I prefer to add some flavor and texture with a glaze.
The glaze I use is very simple some butter, brown sugar, orange zest, and spices. It gets brushed all over the ham in several stages, and in between each brushing, it goes back into the oven to caramelize.
When the ham has finished baking, you must rest it for a minimum of 15 minutes before slicing so it stays juicy. But the beauty of it is that you can serve it hot or cold and it will be lovely. Perfect for leftover ham sandwiches!
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How Long To Cook A Ham
This recipe uses a bone in ham since bone-in ham produces the best flavor and very tender meat .
For this recipe a bone-in fully cooked ham cooks for about 12-14 minutes per pound .
It is easy to overcook ham so to really make a perfect baked ham, I suggest using a thermometer like this one.
I have one and I simply leave in the ham while it cooks and monitor the temperature for perfect results. . They cost less than $20 and I think its truly a small investment to be able to produce perfect results when cooking ! You should also see a cooking guide on the package of the ham you buy for cooking times but a thermometer is most accurate.