Maple beer glazed ham
- Preparation 10 min
- Cooking 2 h
- Servings 8 to 10
- Freezing Absolutely
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🎉 A ham for the nights that matter
Christmas, Easter, any dinner where people are coming over. That is when this ham comes out. Two hours in the oven and the whole house smells like maple syrup, which does half the work before anyone sits down.
Nothing tricky about it either. Ham in a big pot, pour, cover, baste now and then. The oven handles the rest while you deal with the potatoes.
🍁 Beer first, the maple came later
I set out to make a beer ham. The maple syrup was an afterthought, and it is the thing that changed the whole dish. The beer lays down the malt and the bitterness underneath, the syrup drops a ridiculous depth of flavour on top, and the Dijon mustard brushed over the ham keeps all that sweetness in check. Skip the mustard and the whole thing turns cloying.
🍲 Keep the cooking broth
Two hours later you are left with a pot full of beer, maple and smoked ham juices. Most people pour that down the drain.
Do not. It is the base of a split pea soup that tastes like it simmered all day, and it cooks rice or lentils far better than water ever will. Chill it, lift off the fat that sets on top, and it keeps a week in the fridge.
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🍯 Glaze at the end, never at the start
Sugar put on early just burns over two hours of cooking. This ham honestly does not need a final glaze, it comes out loaded as it is, but if you want that lacquered crust, take the lid off for the last fifteen minutes and brush on some of the cooking liquid reduced with a spoonful of maple syrup. Uncovered is the whole point. Under a lid it steams and nothing sets.
🔥 The mistakes that wreck a glazed ham
Glazing too early is number one. Cranking the oven is number two, because 350 °F is not a suggestion and anything hotter dries the meat before the middle is even warm. Then there is cooking the whole thing uncovered, which is how people end up sawing through a dry ham and blaming the recipe.
And one nobody talks about: buying a ham that already comes glazed and then glazing it again. Read the label first.
🍺 No maple beer where you live?
An amber or a brown ale, plus a couple of extra spoonfuls of maple syrup stirred into the beer before it goes in the pot. That is on top of the cup of syrup already in the recipe, not instead of it. A light lager will not survive two hours in there, so do not bother.
🦴 Bone-in or boneless?
Mine is a 2.6 kg bone-in half butt. A boneless ham of the same weight cooks faster and slices much easier, but you give up what the bone hands over to the broth. Start checking it around the hour and a half mark and baste more often.
🐌 Slow cooker version
I have never tested this one myself, so take it as a possible adaptation rather than my method. The logic holds: ham in the crock, beer, syrup, mustard on top, water three quarters of the way up, 5 to 6 hours on low. What you give up is the browned top the oven gives you.
📅 Make it ahead
Everything can go in the pot the night before and sit covered in the fridge. Pull it out half an hour before it goes in the oven. Cooked ham reheats well too, sliced, with a little of its own broth in the dish, covered, at 300 °F.
🥪 Leftovers
My crepes gratin with asparagus and ham bechamel sauce is the first thing that happens to leftovers around here. After that, a gnocchi gratin with smoked ham, broccoli and chorizo, or a croque-monsieur with ham, brie cheese and apples. A few slices tucked into a grilled cheese with apples, Cheddar and caramelized onions works too. And split pea soup built on the cooking broth, obviously.
❄️ Storage
Five days in the fridge in an airtight container. Once it is cooked it freezes without any trouble, so slice it into portions before it goes in.
✅ What to serve with my maple beer glazed ham
Mashed potatoes and steamed carrots, the way the recipe says. If you are feeding a crowd, maple glazed carrots roasted in the same oven make sense, and something sharp and green on the side stops the whole plate from going sweet.
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Ingredients
- 1 bone-in half butt smoked ham, 2.6 kg, fully cooked
- 2 cups (500 ml) maple beer
- 1 cup (250 ml) maple syrup
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) Dijon mustard
- Water
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Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C).
- Rinse the ham under cold water and place in a large saucepan.
- Add beer and maple syrup and stir. Pour enough water to cover the ham to 3/4.
- Brush top with Dijon mustard and pepper to taste.
- Cover and place in the oven. Cook for 2 hours, basting regularly with the juice. Serve with mashed potatoes and steamed carrots!
After. At the very end, and with the lid off. A glaze put on at the start spends two hours turning into burnt sugar, while the same glaze in the last fifteen minutes sets into a crust. This particular ham does not need one, since the beer and the maple syrup are doing that job from the inside for the whole cook.
Something sweet, something sharp, something with a bit of body. Here it is maple syrup and Dijon mustard, and the reduced cooking liquid is what gives it body. Straight syrup on its own slides off and tastes flat. The mustard is what keeps the whole thing from being candy.
Glazing too early. Turning the oven up past 350 °F to speed things along. Leaving the ham uncovered for the entire cook so it dries out before the glaze ever matters. And glazing a ham that came pre-glazed from the store, which nobody warns you about.
Cover it and cook it in liquid, not dry in a roasting pan. Keep the oven at 350 °F so the liquid barely moves instead of boiling. Baste with the juices while it cooks. A dry ham is almost always a ham that ran too hot or sat uncovered too long.
Crepes gratin with asparagus and ham bechamel sauce first, every time. Then a gnocchi gratin with smoked ham, broccoli and chorizo, a croque-monsieur with ham, brie cheese and apples, or a few slices in a grilled cheese with apples, Cheddar and caramelized onions. Split pea soup on the cooking broth if you saved it. Freeze the rest in portions.
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