Easy Baked Ham Recipe

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Make this Easy Baked Ham Recipe for your holiday dinner! This baked ham is coated with the most unbelievable brown sugar and butter glaze!

Looking for more holiday dinner ideas? Looking for a Slow Cooker Ham recipe? We’ve got you. An easy Roasted Turkey Breast recipe? We’ve got that too…

Brown Butter Baked Ham in a baked ham recipe for the holidays

Easy Baked Ham Recipe

This glazed ham recipe is a picture perfect holiday dinner! A lot of people serve baked ham for Christmas dinner, but if your family is anything like mine one turkey for Thanksgiving just isn’t enough.

Not that the quantity isn’t enough…but we like to have options. Normally we serve a roasted turkey and a baked ham recipe for Thanksgiving dinner.

Like I said, we like to have options.

This Easy Baked Ham recipe is so darn delicious and easy to make, you won’t want to save it just for your holiday meals. Sunday dinners, meal prepping for the week…it’s on our go to dinner list.

What’s The Best Kind Of Ham To Use For Baked Ham?

We like using a bone-in ham because I think it tends to be juicier, plus the presentation is on point. But you can also use a boneless ham for this recipe, it’s really what you prefer.

The brown butter glaze for this ham will also work on a spiral sliced ham, just follow the directions for cooking the ham on the packaging and use this brown butter glaze during the last 30 minutes of cooking.

You’ll definitely want to ditch that glaze packet that comes with the package and use this brown sugar and butter glaze recipe instead!

brown butter baked ham recipe showing glaze being put on

How to Bake a Ham

Baked hams are one of those dinners that just look so impressive when you put it on the table, people don’t realize how easy they are to make!

All you need to do is remove the tough skin (or rind)  from your ham and score it. Removing the skin is really easy once you do it, just run your knife along the bottom edge of the skin and run your fingers between the skin and the fat of the ham. It comes off pretty easily.

Scoring the ham is simply making a diamond pattern along the fat of the ham, how big or how small the scoring pattern is is up to you.

What scoring the ham does is create crispy edges for the glaze to stick onto and caramelize. Literally my most favorite part of the ham, especially when the glaze is as tasty as this one is.

baked ham recipe on a rack before the oven

The bottom of the baking pan is where the magic happens, for this ham recipe we added a good amount of butter to the bottom of the pan, chicken broth, garlic and a bay leaf.

As the ham cooks, the juices will run down and add to the butter mixture which will eventually create the glaze.

The ham is going to cook almost until the end without any glaze at all, the glaze comes in during the last 30 minutes of cooking otherwise the glaze would burn.

Burnt glaze is no good. Caramelized glaze is bomb. There’s a fine line but a big difference, which is why the glaze goes on towards the end.

baked ham recipe sliced on a platter

How Do You Slice Ham On The Bone?

Once the ham is done, let it rest for 15 minutes tented with foil before slicing. Then turn the ham on its side and start slicing the ham to your desired thickness until you reach the bone in the center.

You can keep slicing the ham this way and then turn it over to the other side and slice the rest.

Alternately you can stand the ham upright and carve down the bone into 3-4 thick pieces and then cut the pieces that you cut off the bone into thinner slices. Either way works, it’s all what you feel the most comfortable doing.

Some people use a ham stand for easier slicing but I don’t really feel like they are necessary, a sharp knife and a cutting board will work just fine!

brown butter baked ham recipe on a white platter

One thing we know is that this glazed ham recipe is going to be on your permanent holiday menu! Recipes like a baked ham look so beautiful when serving, they always please a crowd. Then there’s the flavor or this buttery, brown sugar glaze that can’t be beat, it’s a holiday dinner win.

What Side Dishes Go Best With Ham?

We’ve got side dishes by the dozens here to share with you! Just head to our “Side Dish” menu and start browsing. We’ve got low carb recipes, casserole recipes, roasted vegetable recipes…take your pick!

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Brown Butter Baked Ham in a baked ham recipe for the holidays

Easy Baked Ham Recipe

  • Author: Dan
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 3 hours
  • Total Time: 3 hours 5 minutes
  • Yield: 10 servings 1x

Try our Easy Baked Ham for your holiday dinner! This easy baked ham recipe is covered with the most unbelievable brown sugar and butter glaze!

Scale

Ingredients

  • 810 pound bone-in cooked ham
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 1 1/2 sticks butter, sliced
  • 78 garlic cloves
  • 2 bay leaves
  • For The Glaze:
  • Drippings and liquid from the roasting pan
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3 tablespoons dijon mustard

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Pour the chicken broth into the bottom of a large roasting pan. Add the butter, garlic and bay leaves.
  3. Remove the rind from the ham (optional), then score the ham into a diamond shape pattern. Place the ham on a baking rack and into the roasting pan. Cover the roasting pan with foil and bake for 2 hours.
  4. Remove the ham from the oven. Carefully remove the ham and rack from the roasting pan and place onto a heat safe surface. Drain the juices from the pan into a pot (discarding the bay leaves), then place the ham and rack back onto the roasting pan. Cover the ham with foil.
  5. Bring the liquid to a boil and let reduce for 10 minutes the butter will darken and get brown during the cooking time. Whisk in the brown sugar and mustard and then remove from the heat.
  6. Baste the ham with half of the glaze and return the ham to the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove the ham from the oven and baste again with the other half of the glaze and bake for another 20 minutes.
  7. When the ham registers 160 degrees on a thermometer, remove the ham from the oven and place it on a board. Let the ham rest, covered with foil for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Recipe Notes

The cooking time in this recipe is for a 10 pound ham, adjust the cooking time higher or lower depending on the size ham you have. The usual cooking time is about 20 minutes per pound, until a thermometer registers 160 degrees.

  • Category: Dinner
  • Method: Oven
  • Cuisine: American

Keywords: ham recipe, baked ham recipe, glazed ham recipe, ham glaze recipe, holiday dinner, thanksgiving recipes, christmas recipes, how to bake a ham

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3 Responses
  1. Tricia

    Just wanted to let you know we made this for Thanksgiving and everyone loved it! The glaze is so easy and so delicious, we will be making this for Christmas too!

    1. Joanne Collins

      I gave this glaze a “5”. It was a beautiful shiny brown. I substituted with the butter and brown sugar to lower carbs and fat. I also added a little bit of crushed pineapple in the glaze left in the bottom of the pan when everything was done. Thank you for sharing !

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