One of the most delicious meat products made all over the world is ham. It’s availability in supermarkets make it easier for households to prepare it. Therefore, cooking a ham for the family and your guests can now be done with ease a breeze using an oven. But before we get into the different ways to cook ham, let me give you an overview below :
- Ham can be from any pork meat.
- The pork leg cut is what is usually made to ham.
- Flesh collected from various parts of pork can be mechanically pressed to make a ham.
- Turkey ham is famous in some countries where pork is not suitable for eating.
- From multiple regions of the world, you will find meat with cultural specialties and regional names.
- Ham is made in two ways: Dry curing and wet curing.
- Dry curing uses salt.
- Wet curing uses brine to produce a saltish ham.
- Either dry or wet curing uses smoking to provide extra flavor.
- The use of saffron and black pepper adds flavor to the ham.
4 Ways to Cook Ham in the Oven :
Ham is a lump of delicious and tender meat served on various occasions. Although cooking ham is not tricky, but it’s a time-consuming process. Depending on the cured ham, it will require a few hours to cook, which is about one and a half hours. It also depends on the flavor you want to add.
Here are ways to cook in the most available appliance we may have – the oven :
1. Cooking baked ham with pineapple in the oven
If you love pineapple, this recipe is for you. The ingredients you will need in cooking this juicy ham in the oven are :
- About 6 to 8 pounds of cured ham.
- Garlic cloves.
- One can slice pineapple.
- Twelve cherries.
Steps to follow when baking ham with pineapple in the oven :
- Firstly, preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Next, take out ham from wrapper and make diagonal cuts on ham with a sharp knife giving it a diamond shape.
- Then uncover the cloves and fill in the diagonal cuts of ham.
- After that, cover ham with aluminum foil and then bake for one and a half hours at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Now take out ham from the oven, remove the aluminum foil and drain the juices that ham secreted during baking.
- In a bowl, mix brown sugar in a quarter of drained juice and then pour over the baked ham.
- Open a can of pineapple and place pineapple slices and cherries on ham.
- Lastly, bake this uncovered ham for 30 to 45 minutes. Baking with pineapple removes any savory taste of ham.
- Finally, a delicious baked ham with pineapple is ready to serve
2. Tender honey baked ham.
The most tender ham you can ever have in your life is the baked ham with honey. For cooking a honey baked ham in the oven, this recipe will need to be cured or pre-cooked spiral meat.
A pre-cooked ham is easy because cooking it in the oven gives the heat it needs to cook. A spiral ham absorbs the juicy honey in each, and every cut and whole meat absorbs the honey flavor. If you don’t have a spiral ham, you can make it by diagonal cuts on ordinary pork.
For a caramelized glaze :
Firstly, combine some brown sugar with honey and then brush this glaze on the ham.
- And then for easy cleanup later, line the oven pan with aluminum foil.
- After that, place the glazed ham inside the oven with the cut side down.
- Then, set the oven to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Pre-cooked meat takes 10 to 15 minutes per pound to cook in the oven.
- Uncooked ham needs about 20 minutes to cook.
- Lastly, once baking is done, take out the baked ham and then let it rest for 20 minutes.
Delicious honey glazed ham is ready to serve.
TIP : For 4 to 5 days, leftovers can be kept in the fridge. You have to freeze it, that is if you want to consume it at a later time.
3. Here’s how cooking a pre-cooked ham in the oven can be made easy.
Pre-cooked and wet cured hams are what usually get from the supermarket. When cooking pre-cooked and wet cured ham in the oven, follow this method :
- After taking out the ham from its pack, cut it in diagonal cuts with a sharp knife, which makes it a meat diamond.
- Then preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- After that, put the ham inside the oven dish and cover it with aluminum foil for a juicy and tender ham cook.
- Pre-cooked ham needs 10 to 15 minutes per pound to cook well. After 15 minutes, take out the cooked ham outside the oven.
- Remove the aluminum foil. Make sure the internal temperature of cooked ham should not be less than 145 degrees.
- Lastly, let it rest for 15 minutes and cut into pieces. Delicious pre-cooked ham is ready to serve.
4. Lastly, a pre-cooked glazed ham.
The most effortless to cook is a pre-cooked ham because it needs some heat to bake well. Aside from that, you can make various glazes for different flavors.
These glazes may include :
- Blueberry and Chipotle Glaze
- Brown Sugar and Mustard Glaze
- Orange and Soy Glaze.
- Firstly, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Then uncover the ham and make some diagonal cuts with a sharp knife.
- And then, you can insert garlic chops in these cuts for enhanced flavor and aroma.
- After that, you can make any of the above glazes by mixing the required ingredients.
- And then, brush the ham with glaze thoroughly with a thin coating.
- Lastly, put the ham on the oven dish and cook it for 10 minutes uncovered.
- Make sure when you take out the cooked ham outside the oven, its inner temperature must be above 145 degrees for perfect cooking.
- After letting it rest for 10 minutes, baked ham is ready to be served.
Conclusion :
In this article, we discussed various recipes for how to cook a ham in the oven.
- A pre-cooked ham is very easy to prepare and needs just 10 minutes for perfect cooking in the oven.
- Uncooked ham needs about 25 minutes to cook.
- Even though the ham itself is already a delicious dish, you can add many flavors to ham while cooking
- Adding flavor is very easy. Just mix the ingredients which you want in your taste and make a glaze.
- To glaze ham, these can be used: brown sugar, pineapple syrup, honey, lemon juice, and much more.
- Bake for 10 minutes after glazing the ham.
- By not covering ham with aluminum foil while cooking, it can absorb well the flavors
- Enjoy juicy ham by choosing any flavors for glazing.
If you are a fan of spiral hams, read from my previous post here top ways to cook it. And should you have leftovers, don’t let it go to waste because you can keep it in the fridge and reheat them for later.
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