Recipe For Baked Ham With Easy Brown Sugar Glaze
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This recipe for baked ham features the easiest 3-ingredient brown sugar glaze. You’re going to want to keep reading to discover the secret ingredient that makes this glaze so tasty!
This recipe for baked ham is from my great-grandmother Lela. Her easy 3-ingredient glaze includes brown sugar, yellow mustard, and… coke! Yep, there’s no , , or used in this . The addition of coke makes this glaze so tasty and ham so succulent everyone will be going back for seconds.
A good and simple baked ham makes the perfect main course for any meal and any occasion, including Easter and Christmas dinner. The added bonus is that once you bake a juicy ham, you usually have the leftovers to make at least three more meals. The hambone in and of itself is a goldmine for the best pot of pintos you could ever hope to eat or you can use it to flavor a comforting pot of senate bean soup.
One of my favorite things to do with baked ham leftovers is to reheat some Jordan rolls the next morning, split them in two, and layer warmed slices of ham in between them for a quick, easy, and darn good breakfast. Coffee washes it down just right. There are already several recipes on SouthernPlate.com using leftover ham. So glaze that ham and get it baking, but be sure to save the ham bone with a little meat still on it! Just pop it in a gallon size bag and stick it in the freezer.
Okay, now that I am sufficiently hungry, let’s get this show on the road!
There is another great ham recipe in my cookbook so be sure and check it out! It is one of many which are exclusive to my cookbook, so they will never be on SouthernPlate.com.
Recipe Ingredients
- Smoked ham
- Yellow mustard
- Brown sugar (either dark or )
- Coke of choice
In a small bowl place your brown sugar, mustard, and coke.
Give that a good stir.
It will become a lot more liquified than you expect it to.
On the off chance it doesn’t (you know, atmospheric pressure, leprechaun interference, whatever) you can always add another tablespoon of coke.
Line a rimmed (or sided) baking pan with aluminum foil, heavy-duty if you have it.
If you don’t have heavy-duty, just use regular. No sense in spending extra money when you don’t have to.
Place ham in the middle of the foil-lined pan.
Brush half of your glaze over the ham (just the parts that you can get to).
If you don’t have a brush just use a big spoon and put gobs of the glaze on the ham and then smear it around a bit.
Most of the gadgets we have in the kitchen are pretty much space taker-uppers anyway.
Seal that up well and roast ham in a 350-degree for 1 hour.
After your ham is baked it will look like this.
Peel the tin foil back and baste ham with the remaining glaze.
Return to oven and bake ham for 30 minutes more uncovered, or until lightly browned.
Remove the from the and allow it to sit for 10 minutes before slicing. Slice ham how you like and enjoy!
If you need to serve it later you can cover it with foil to keep it warm and let it sit on your stovetop. I suggest cutting your within half an hour of removing it from the oven because that is about as long as you’ll be able to stand waiting once you smell it!
This glaze is delicious!
Feels good when people like your cooking, doesn’t it?
Storage
- Store leftover ham in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. Serve cold or quickly reheat in the microwave.
- You can also store glazed ham leftovers in a freezer-safe container or ziplock bag in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge before serving.
Recipe Notes
- You can use any coke you like in this , whether that’s diet coke, diet Dr. Pepper, or a simple can of Coca-Cola.
- I definitely recommend using a baking dish with sides. It’s inevitable that the ham juice will leak out and if it gets in the bottom of your oven you will have quite the smell in your house.
- I use an electric knife that I got for about $25 (like the one pictured HERE*) to slice my glazed ham, but a nice sharp regular knife will work just fine.
- You could also substitute the coke for if you prefer a more traditional . Another option is , if you dare!
- Decorate your with for a festive touch!
- There are many different cuts of : , , bone-in … I recommend the latter for this .
Recipe FAQs
What do you serve with this baked ham recipe?
You can serve your baked ham in so many different ways. For the main meal (if this is a holiday or ), serve it alongside side dishes like mashed potatoes (we also have a sweet potato version) and fresh green beans. Another option is to serve it for lunch on a sandwich or with your favorite salad.
You may also enjoy these ham recipes:
Ham Egg and Cheese Casserole (Insta Pot or Oven!)
Ham Salad (Recipes SHOULD be easy!)
Smoked Ham and Veggies Pasta Salad
How to Cook A Ham & Get At LEAST 4 Meals Out Of It!
Ingredients
- 1 approx 8-lb. smoked, ready-to-cook, bone-in ham
- 1 cup packed brown sugar light or dark, whatever you have
- 2 tablespoons coke or your favorite carbonated soda
- 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
Instructions
- Line a large pan with a lip around it with aluminum foil. Place the ham in the center of the foil.1 approx 8-lb. smoked, ready-to-cook, bone-in ham
- In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, coke, and mustard to make your glaze. Brush half of the glaze over the ham. Wrap the entire ham well in foil. Place in a 350-degree oven for 1 hour.1 cup packed brown sugar, 2 tablespoons coke, 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
- Remove the ham from the oven and peel back the foil, but don't move the ham. Brush the remaining glaze over the ham and return to the oven, uncovered, for another 30 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Allow it to sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes or so before cutting. If you need to serve it later you can cover it with foil to keep it warm and let it sit on your stovetop. I suggest cutting it within half an hour of removing it from the oven because that is about as long as you'll be able to stand waiting once you smell it.
Nutrition
*And by the way, if you purchase that knife through Amazon, Southern Plate gets a very small commission from Amazon that goes towards helping us keep up the site.
Never be afraid to try. Remember, amateurs built the ark.
Professionals built the Titanic.
Christy, love that dinner. What do you do with your leftover bone, or even leftover ham. Sounds like a good upcoming post to me. BTW, picked up an Oct issue of Southern Living in my Drs office. Guess who I recognized? Brady. So I passed it around. You have such a cute family. Hugs! June
Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, vegetables from the garden…fried corn, English peas or butter beans, green beans, or field peas, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and green onions and cornbread , usually Lemon Icebox pie, or a berry cobbler and sweet tea.
My mother would get up early and kill a chicken and clean it, and the kids would go to the garden and pick whatever was in season, bring it in and shell, shuck or snap. The older ones would peel the potatoes.m Mamma would make gravy for the potatoes from the chicken drippings….My dad worked hard all week, so all he did was show up at the table to eat…lol
I can never duplicate the taste of her fried chicken because the chicken was so fresh.
We did not have Sunday dinners that were any more special then the rest of the week. However, this meal looks like our annual Easter meal!
My great-grandma was known for her wonderful cooking as well as her wonderful manners. At one of her family dinners everyone was complimenting her on how tasty everything was when she sent them all into shock as she stood up, hiked up her skirt, put her knee up on the table and leaned over to reach her gravy boat!! “Grandma, why didn’t you ask us to pass you the gravy!” Sitting back down in her chair she replied, “I DID ask…THREE times, but you were so busy talking and I got tired of asking!”
My favorite Sunday meal has to be Easter Sunday. Mimmaw would make her ham and I would help her score it and put the little cloves in the corners. She wold also make my great-grandmothers green beans, you know the ones that are really greasy and not really good for you after they have been cooked all day. She would also have her Cheesy Potatoes which are like a mix of your Cheesy Hash Brown Casserole and your Sour Cream Hash Brown Casserole, but with a corn flake cereal topping. Then of course we would have 7 Layer Salad, Broccoli Salad, fried cornbread, maccaroni salad, corn of some sort, Deviled Eggs, Broccoli Casserole, and then some sort of dessert, but you had to wait for that because there just wasn’t enough room right after. She also would have some pickled eggs that were in a huge jar that had turned pink from the beets that were in there with them. I think me and my Pa-Pa were the only ones that ate them. 🙂
I love pickled eggs with beets….matter of a fact I am getting mine ready to pickle for Easter..
I remember coming home from church and my Momma in her best dress would jump from the car and chase a chicken down and wring its neck …just right there.. Then she would clean it and have it ready to fry along with biscuits and gravy in no time..and the sweet tea…It may gross some of you out, but that was how it was done on a back dirt road farm in Southern Tennessee…Really good fried chicken too.
I love this post as it brought back some fond memories of my childhood. I was born in Tennessee, but raised from 3mo old in California. My parents were country through and through and your post made me think of how they did country things in the middle of the city. Thanks, Cee,Cee
Did you ever watch the chicken run around after she had wrung its neck? That was part of the “fun” back in the good ole days and that, of course, is where the old saying “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” comes from
My mom was not southern, but my favorite Sunday dinner (not necessarily served always on Sundays, but on Sunday-like days such as when I would visit from afar), was her roast whole chicken. She roasted her chicken very, very slowly in a cast iron frying pan so that the meat would be incredibly tender, and loosely tented the chicken until the last part of its cooking time with foil to keep it moist. She usually seasoned the chicken with salt and garlic powder and poultry seasoning, and sometimes with other seasonings. With the chicken pan juices she made fabulous gravy using Lipton’s dried soup mixes, such as a combination of mushroom soup and onion soup. All this was served with cooked carrots tossed with butter and lots of finely chopped parsley, mashed potatoes or rice to eat with the superb gravy, and often some other vegetable such as buttered asparagus or green beans with bits of bacon. Dessert would be something such as an outstanding store-bought vanilla ice cream with fresh raspberries on top. The aroma of that chicken roasting all afternoon was beyond description, and so was the extra tender, fabulously flavorful chicken when we finally got to dig into it.