By Easter Sunday we did our phone dinner — Patty had the ham and pierogi, I had the ham I made from a bone-in half I found at Jewel for $1.99 a pound, Matt and Danielle called in from Springfield, and Kristin called in from New York where everything is much worse than Chicago right now. Nobody said that out loud. We talked about food and Jake and Lily and Ryan told the story about his first Easter at a Chicago firehouse when someone tried to fry a ham. Babcia Rose called separately, spoke Polish at us for twenty minutes, and hung up. Perfectly normal Babcia Rose interaction.
The ham was good. I had never made a whole ham before — I had always been at my parents for Easter — but it turned out to be embarrassingly easy. Scored the fat, rubbed it with brown sugar and mustard and cloves, 325 degrees for a few hours. The glaze caramelized. I ate ham sandwiches for four days after on the cheap white bread Patty always keeps around and it tasted exactly right.
Ryan came home from a shift on Thursday and stood in the doorway for a long time before coming in. He did not say much. I made scrambled eggs because sometimes what you need is the simplest possible food and the presence of someone who loves you. We ate eggs at 10 PM at the kitchen table and he talked for a while about what the city is like right now and I listened. I did not put any of that on the blog.
The blog is doing something I did not anticipate: it is becoming a place where people leave comments about their own cooking and their own families. Someone posted that they made my white bean soup and their kids ate three bowls each. Someone posted that they had not cooked at home in years and now they cook every day. I started this thing to save money on groceries. I did not expect it to matter to anyone else. That is the part of this particular season that I will keep.
I had never made a whole ham before that Easter — I had always been at my parents’ house, never the one in charge of it — and I think that’s exactly why it mattered so much that it worked. The recipe I kept coming back to was this champagne baked ham: the method is essentially the one I used, scored fat and all, and the glaze does what a good glaze should do, which is caramelize into something that makes the whole kitchen smell like a holiday even when the holiday is happening mostly through a phone screen. If you’re making a ham for the first time, or making it alone for the first time, this is the one.
Champagne Baked Ham
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 2 hrs 30 min | Total Time: 2 hrs 45 min | Servings: 12
Ingredients
- 1 bone-in half ham (6–8 lbs), fully cooked
- 1 cup champagne or dry sparkling wine
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 cup pineapple juice or apple juice
Instructions
- Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Place the ham cut-side down in a roasting pan. Using a sharp knife, score the fat cap in a diamond pattern, cutting about 1/4 inch deep.
- Make the glaze. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the brown sugar, Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard, ground cloves, black pepper, and pineapple juice. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the glaze is smooth, about 3–4 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Add champagne. Pour the champagne into the bottom of the roasting pan. Brush about one-third of the glaze generously over the surface of the ham, working it into the scored cuts.
- Bake low and slow. Tent the ham loosely with foil and bake for about 15 minutes per pound — roughly 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours for a 6–8 lb ham — basting with pan juices every 30 minutes.
- Glaze and caramelize. During the last 30 minutes, remove the foil and brush the remaining glaze over the ham in two or three passes, every 10 minutes, until the surface is deeply caramelized and lacquered.
- Rest before slicing. Remove the ham from the oven and let it rest, loosely tented with foil, for 15 minutes before slicing. This keeps the juices from running out when you cut.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 340 | Protein: 31g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 1180mg