glazed ham with apricots and pineapple

Making a glazed ham almost feels like cheating when it comes to the cooking. Most of the flavor comes from the curing process, so it feels like you’re not cooking a ham, so much as heating it up. That means there are two really important things to do when you make a glazed ham. First, buy a good ham. Our butcher shop cures their own ham and do a really nice job–it’s salty, sweet, and smoky. Second, make a good glaze. It’s your only contribution to the dish, so you’ve got to make it count.

For our glaze, I used peach jam and molasses for sweetness (the molasses also gave the ham a rich dark color) and rice wine vinegar, pineapple, and dried apricots for a little tartness. In the end, a glaze is as much about looks as it is about taste and this one succeeded there, too. It was a ham that Tom or Jerry would be happy to eat off the bone in a single bite. For the full recipe, head over to the Family Kitchen.