First, understand this: you are not cooking the ham—you are re-animating it. The smoking process already did the heavy lifting of making it safe to eat. Your job is to bring it back to life with gentle, even heat. If you blast it at 450°F like a frozen pizza, you’ll get a dry, salty doorstop that could double as a paperweight.
You want a low-and-slow approach. Set your oven to 325°F. Yes, that’s the Goldilocks zone of ham heating. Too low and you’ll be waiting until next Tuesday; too high and you’ll cremate the edges. At 325°F, you’re basically treating your ham to a warm spa day.
Glaze Like You Mean It
Here’s where you get to play mad scientist. The classic move is a glaze of brown sugar, a splash of pineapple juice, and a generous squeeze of yellow mustard. It sounds weird, I know. But trust me—the mustard disappears into a tangy shadow that makes the sugar scream. If you want to get wild, throw in a tablespoon of bourbon. Just don’t drink the rest of the bottle while you wait. (Do it. I won’t tell.)
Score the ham’s surface in a diamond pattern. This isn’t just for looks—it creates little pockets for the glaze to pool and caramelize into crunchy, candy-like bits. That crispy outer layer is called the “ham bark,” and it’s the only bark you’ll get without owning a dog.
