There is no dinner I love more then Baked Ham.  The smell of ham cooking immediately reminds me of big Sunday dinners at my gram’s old farmhouse as a kid (and an adult).  We even ate those dinners off the same plates you see in these pictures – Thanks for the plates Gram!  In my mind Ham is is the catalyst for so many great family days.  It wasn’t just at my gram’s house.  My mom makes a great ham and so does Em’s mom.  On Easter we go to Em’s parents for a noontime ham dinner and mine for a 5pm ham dinner.  You will never hear me complain about being treated to two amazing family dinners in one day!

I think Ham is such a great meal for the cook because unlike other dinners when you are rushing to get everything done at once, Ham you just let cook in the oven for a couple hours and you get to sit around and build anticipation (and mashed potatoes).  Since I will be freeloading ham off my family on Easter I decided to do my own baked ham a few weeks before to put on the blog for Easter.

My Ham recipe was slightly adapted for a recipe I found about 10 years ago called Monte’s Ham.  You can see the original link from Saveur  here.  The author of the recipe also has his own website Monte’s Ham.  The glaze is amazing on this ham – so much so that I have never tried making it another way in 10 years.  I don’t use a 15 lb Ham though, a 7-8 lb bone-in ham is plenty with enough leftovers for days (and I eat a lot of ham).

The first thing to do after acquiring your 7 lb ham is to place it in a large roasting pan, then trim the outer skin and fat off.  Leave the skin and fat in the pan around ham and it will get crispy from the oven and sauce and be the absolute best part.  Then score the ham.  I don’t use cloves in the ham.  I have never cared for cloves and I find them too expensive for the amount of ham I like to consume.

Next I pour a little water in the pan and cover with tin foil.  It goes into a 325 degree oven to start cooking.

While the ham is starting I make the glaze.  Into a bowl I put 1 12oz jar orange marmalade, 1 9 oz jar dijon mustard (I use Raye’s Old World Gourmet) and 1 cup of brown sugar. I mix together well and let sit until ready to glaze.

The ham gets 20 minutes in the oven before being removed.  I take the tin foil off – but save it for the “resting period” later.  Now the ham gets a coating of the glaze.  You will want to glaze 3 times over the next hour so only use 1/3 of glaze each time.  The ham now goes back into the over without the tin foil and cooks another hour or so.  Remove twice more and glaze during this hour.  For a 7 lb ham I am shooting for 1 3/4 hours in the oven at 325 total.

Once it is done I remove ham and cover with tin foil to rest for 15 minutes.  After the rest it gets sliced and drizzled with the glaze leftover in the pan.  The crispy bits left in the pan I quickly devour before anyone in the family is any the wiser.

The ham dinner is truly amazing but it also has the added benefit of providing tons of leftovers to make other meals.  You can substitute ham for chicken and make a scramble see Chicken Scramble for the recipe.   In the next few weeks I will also post two new recipes using ham leftovers – Hawaiian Pasta Bake (a ham and pineapple “Hawaiian Pizza” like casserole) and Slow Cooker Ham Bone Soup (a crockpot recipe using the leftover ham bone with dry beans).

I hope everyone reading has an amazing Easter filled with lots of family memories (and ham)!