The Traditional Christmas Ham!

My wife volun-told me to make the Christmas ham this year, and I was happy to accept! But… it had to have a special ForensicBBQ spin.

To date, I’ve never done a ham. I’ve read many different methods, fears of drying it out, and hams not collecting enough smoke.. so this turned into a two-part smoke: The test run, and the main event.

As you may have seen with the SmokeFest Beef Tenderloin smoke, when I enter into a new meat item – I practice. I usually give it out to others to see what can be improved upon, but this damn covid murdered 2020 social interaction. I did what I can, and as you would hope – the second smoke exceeded expectations. I’ll show you what I did and why I did it! Let’s get going:

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

When thinking this through, I wanted to make sure it stood out from the typical “add heat and serve”. I wanted a spiral cut that I could impart flavor to each piece, while allowing smoke to get at it from all angles. The risk was drying the thing out, but that’s why I did a test run. And you’ll see what I did and why.

Two things were certain for this: I was going to use my own pork rub, and I couldn’t wait to use the Whiskey Barrel Maple Syrup for the glaze.

But I screwed it up- the ham was PRE GLAZED. I was pissed, but could only blame myself for the oversight. Wasn’t going to let it hold me back, but definitely knew for next time to read the fine print.

So when it came time for the main event, got a nice quality ham that clearly stated “with glaze packet”. I was still going with the whiskey syrup, homemade rub, and I’m sure you’re wondering “what’s with the skewers?”

The pre-cooked spiral ham lets you do some pre glaze and rub. You’re gonna pack this thing with flavor and make memories.

Looks like a hot mess. And it was. I fanned out the ham a bit, dumped some syrup on there, and sprinkled the rub in the ham. Not gonna lie, it was kind of a bitch to work with. You can see the ham was cut poorly, but I was working with it. I pierced the ham around with some toothpicks to hold them together.

I thought keeping it all together would prevent dry-out. And it did for the most part. They didn’t hold well together, and when it got time to cook – it really opened up. So when it came time to cook the main ham:

The main event ham got some special treatment. While it took somewhere around 10 minutes to prep the test-ham, this one was done elegantly and took about 20. I separated each piece, rubbed some syrup, sprinkled some rub, and moved to the next. I trimmed up some loose pieces and when I went to skewer, I pressed the ham together so it didn’t open up as much.

Recap: Take each piece of ham and coat with syrup, sprinkle with rub. Take care with each piece as to keep the structure together (two people would’ve been helpful: one to season, one to hold).

I put a nice layer on the outside of the ham before throwing it on the smoker. We weren’t going for second place.

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The Process

I went with the typical 225 degrees for about 3-4 hours. Since these were pre-cooked, all we’re adding his smoke and heat, we’re not cooking it. I emptied out the hopper on the RecTeq bull and loaded it up with some pecan wood. I didn’t want to go super crazy smoky, like a hickory.. since I had a diverse audience. After every hour, I went and threw on a glaze (Part for moisture, part for flavor)

So here’s where I made a judgement call. You can see the toothpick method really opened up the ham. The front piece was dry and I feared the rest would follow. As I stated, every hour, I went and put a glaze on there. If you recall, the test ham already had its own glaze on there. While my 3-part whiskey syrup, 1-part honey mix was for pride, I knew I wouldn’t get the right flavor on there.

My judgement call? Cook it the way I want it. I left it on there for a little bit longer. While this darkened picture looks like I burnt the hell out of it, I actually really only crisped the first couple pieces.

Those crispy first couple pieces were perfect… for me. I knew it was probably a personal preference, so I had to cook for my audience. Not to mention the presentation was a bit rough. Overall: I could do better. Flavor was good, had some dry pieces, and presentation wasn’t great. So… let’s get back to the main-event ham

So you can see the skewer method already is working better. The first piece will be the “chef’s cut” and I’ll eat that one. The second thing you’ll notice is that it was still opening up a bit even after the bigger diameter holders. I had a plan for when this was starting to happen too.

Why didn’t I do this to start with? Simply: Flavor and smoke. Remember: I went with the spiral cut to ALLOW for the smoke, and individual seasoning of each ham piece. When it started to get where I percieved a drying out moment, I flipped it. Puts the pieces back together, dunks that front piece in the juices and let me put some more syrup on there.

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The Result

This was a much better result, both flavor and presentation. You can see I plucked some loose pieces off the top and used those as my taster pieces. This was an absolute beauty of a product. I didn’t end up taking off that front piece of ham, because it just looked great as is. I didn’t go the full 4 hours like I did the tester, this was pulled around 3.5 hours, maybe even a little sooner.

I gotta say, this was a fun journey. I enjoy putting up the process and showing you what works, what didn’t, and what I did to correct the issue. It can’t always be the perfect product, but that’s how we all get better.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and will have a Happy and Safe New Year!

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The Recipe