Pineapple Ham Glaze

Adding sweet to meat is at its best in baked ham, when the sugary glaze basted onto the caramelizing fat slowly and subtly permeates down toward the bone. Flavor aside, glazing a ham is essential to its glorious presentation. The fundamentals are simple: Sugar for sweetness, spices for complexity, and a little acidity to balance it all out.

In some traditional ham recipes, the ham is studded with cloves for aroma and decoration, but accidentally biting into a whole clove can be an annoyance to say the least, so we add the cloves to the glaze and strain them out before basting the ham.

Ham glazes are usually made with something sweet, something savory, and something acidic. This recipe utilizes honey and brown sugar for the sweetness, while pineapple plays the role of both sweet and acidic. For complexity, we add mustard, star anise, and cloves. Feel free to experiment with these other flavor combinations.

• Apricot, mustard, and white wine
• Mango, brown sugar, chilies, and lime
• Fig, ginger, and white balsamic
• Pepper jelly, orange, and port
• Orange marmalade, bourbon, and ginger beer

Start glazing the ham when it’s heated through and you’re ready to turn up the heat to crisp up the skin. 

Ham is best heated low and slow while wrapped in foil to retain moisture. At this point there should be no glaze on the ham. Once the ham is heated through, remove the foil, crank up the heat, and generously coat the ham in your glaze. You’ll want to add more glaze once or twice more so the glaze can absorb into the meat and caramelize the fat gradually.