Spicy Habanero Dr. Pepper Ham

When you get gifted a ham, you smoke said ham. Granted, they’re already pre-cooked anyway, so all we’re doing is jazzing it up. Feel free to check out my other ham cook – spiral-cut, so it was much easier to play with: The Easter Ham & The Traditional Christmas Ham! For those ones, I cooked for an audience. Today, I cook for me.

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

Since I’m sharing links – I loved the flavor of my Beef Jerky: Dr. Pepper & Habanero! so I thought I’d try it on a ham. And I’m glad I did. This glaze is just about – if not better – than the jerky recipe, and even so post-cook. I’m typing this up quite awhile after I made it. I pulled a leftover freezer pack out of the fridge and threw it on a sandwich, and it holds up.

Tried and tested Fine Swine rub is going to cover this slab o’ pig. Thanks to my sister for gifting this ham, I gave it the royal treatment. They got a bag of it in return.

Put a good dusting on there. I didn’t throw the amount I used in the recipe, cause you’ll know when you have enough on there. Or you won’t and it will be just as good. I always have mason jars of my rubs everywhere. Just found another one in the garage last week I forgot about.

I’m still thinking the habanero is my favorite pepper. The heat and taste is pretty much on point for what I look for. Jalapeno is good too, but when you build that tolerance, you start substituting jalapenos for green pepper. Habanero still gives you that hit, while also tasting fantastic. (My old dog Abigail didn’t think so when she devoured the plants.. karma)

The prep is the hardest part. Building the glaze, dusting the ham and then we can just sit back and relax. Unless you have an uncut ham (like this one was). Then you try to slice it as best you can with the knife you have available. Anyway, let’s get ‘er on the RecTeq

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The Process

I threw it in a pan because I knew that glaze was going to be a disaster. We’re (hopefully) coming out of winter, and I’m beyond ready to give this thing a clean. I don’t make a dollar from RecTeq – but I showcase the hell out of their product. And there’s a reason. Years later, it’s still running like a champ. Two-twenty five fahrenheit for just a couple hours is all.

Your ham is already cooked, it’s just cherry on top that we’re doing to it. More flavor, more sweet, and more spice. When that rub starts taking hold and becoming one with the ham, start thinking about applying glaze. Roughly a two-hour cook, so I threw on coat #1 after about an hour or so.

When it was getting close to done, I spun it around to make sure I gave the underbelly a little love. Made sure I got the glaze on there good.

Let that glaze warm up on there, and pull it before it starts to burn and get bitter. Something like you’ll see below.

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The Result

Now, I’ll save you the hack job of a cut that I tried to put on this thing. I forgot I picked up an electric knife, I’m sure that would’ve been helpful. But I did my best to do slices, and everything else got chunked out. But that there is a damn good ham. The spice left a tingle on the lips, and everything came together just perfectly.

There isn’t a fancy end photo, because trying to hand trim a ham with a old dull knife.. you end up eating throughout the carve. And boy did I. I can’t tell you just how good that flavor was. Even the middle-ish pieces that didn’t get a lot of that exterior flavor.. Once you get a piece that has a little edge, you feel it.

I had it for lunch, breakfast, dinner.. Ham here, ham there. Everything had ham like it was Easter/Christmas all over again. I mentioned before, I recently just broke it back out from the freezer, and it was just as tasty. If you have a spice-loving family, might want to give this one a try. If you have a plant-based wife who won’t eat your cooking, so you cook for you – the world is your oyster.

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The Recipe