Smoked Ham

[Mac2bdr]

Has anyone ever smoked a Ham like I have in the picture here?
It’s Supposedly “apple wood” smoked already, but I doubt that has much flavor. I’m not typically a Ham fan but the meat selection was extremely thin at Costco this week so we are trying this out on the smoker...
I’m assuming it’s some combo of letting it smoke unwrapped for a bit and then wrapping so it doesn’t dry out??
Can I put a rub on the outside or should I stick to brown sugar?

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Thx

 

[ccmjr77]

I have done 3 hams since I got my Bull. They have turned out great. all of them were smoked hams already. I score the outside in a crisscross pattern about 1/4" deep so that some of the glaze and rub gets down into it a little. I have put one directly on the grates and the other 2 I had put in a foil pan with juice in the bottom. I put a rub on the ham and then made a glaze with OJ or pineapple juice, brown sugar, mustard, honey and some rub. I start on LO for more smoke for 1-2 hours, then crank up the temp to 300 until internal is around 140. Good eating.

 

[Mac2bdr]

I have done 3 hams since I got my Bull. They have turned out great. all of them were smoked hams already. I score the outside in a crisscross pattern about 1/4" deep so that some of the glaze and rub gets down into it a little. I have put one directly on the grates and the other 2 I had put in a foil pan with juice in the bottom. I put a rub on the ham and then made a glaze with OJ or pineapple juice, brown sugar, mustard, honey and some rub. I start on LO for more smoke for 1-2 hours, then crank up the temp to 300 until internal is around 140. Good eating.

Thank you! I didn’t think about scoring the meat first, great idea, I’m gonna try that for sure.
Are you glazing the meat during the first few hours or was that to put in the foil with the meat when wrapped?

 

[ccmjr77]

I start glazing in the last hour or so of cooking. Just the rub for the smoking and start of cooking. I never wrap mine. If I use the pan, it just provides some juice and a place for the glaze to run into, which keeps the drip pan in the grill a little cleaner.

 

[Mac2bdr]

Ahh gotcha, will do. Thanks again!

 

[Roaniecowpony]

I've smoked them for the past 20 years around the holidays. Sometimes its a butt or shank, sometimes the crowd is bigger and I do a whole ham. I've always done them on charcoal. But the RecTec should work about as well.

First rule: never use a spiral cut ham. They just dry out and fall apart.

I've got to where I inject them with a mixture of maple syrup, rub, and a liquid to thin it like water or pork broth. The rub I use has brown sugar in it as well as savory spices. I use a commercial rub, John Henry's Sugar Maple Rub. I use the injection and rub to season and glaze the outside into a candy like glaze. I don't glaze the outside until I'm satisfied with the smoke I've gotten into the ham first.

My process is to make the injection, inject, score the outside in a square pattern, smoke for a few hours, then bump the heat up to 325-350F and start adding the rub the outside and basting with the injection mix. You need that heat to turn the sugars into a glaze and create a dark bark.

The combination of sweet, spicey and smoke, make the ham an incredible flavored meat.

If you see the brown sugar is not carmelized, you need more heat. You can cheat by using a torch to glaze it like chefs do. Be careful if you use your weed burner....jus sayin.

 

[Mac2bdr]

Wow, that looks professional, great work.

I don’t have charcoal, but will do the best I can to take both of your advice tomorrow and make it happen on the smoker.

I do have a Weber gas grill, I wonder if I could use that to help carmelize the brown sugar??

Thank you both for the help.

 

[Roaniecowpony]

You can get 325-350f in the rectec to carmelize sugar.

 

[Roaniecowpony]

Oh, and trim the fat off as best you can before smoking. That will get more smoke into the meat.

 

[Mac2bdr]

The ham came out very good, at least compared to what we are used to. Juiciest one we have ever made. The bark was unreal, tasted like candy.

I smoked it at 180 for about 2 hours then bumped the temp to 350 until the internal temp was around 130 degrees and bumped it one last time to 400 until it hit 140. The brown sugar wasn’t Caramelizing as well as I was hoping at 350, increasing the temp certainly helped. Overall we were happy with the results.

For the glaze I ended up combining some homemade Raspberry Jam, Maple Syrup, brown sugar, Apple Juice, Homemade Rib Rub and some Cayenne Pepper. It was what we had on hand, but tasted better than expected.

Thanks for the tips, they were very helpful!

 

[Lawman]

The ham came out very good, at least compared to what we are used to. Juiciest one we have ever made. The bark was unreal, tasted like candy.

I smoked it at 180 for about 2 hours then bumped the temp to 350 until the internal temp was around 130 degrees and bumped it one last time to 400 until it hit 140. The brown sugar wasn’t Caramelizing as well as I was hoping at 350, increasing the temp certainly helped. Overall we were happy with the results.

For the glaze I ended up combining some homemade Raspberry Jam, Maple Syrup, brown sugar, Apple Juice, Homemade Rib Rub and some Cayenne Pepper. It was what we had on hand, but tasted better than expected.

Thanks for the tips, they were very helpful!

Looks like it turned out great!

 

[Roaniecowpony]

The ham came out very good, at least compared to what we are used to. Juiciest one we have ever made. The bark was unreal, tasted like candy.

I smoked it at 180 for about 2 hours then bumped the temp to 350 until the internal temp was around 130 degrees and bumped it one last time to 400 until it hit 140. The brown sugar wasn’t Caramelizing as well as I was hoping at 350, increasing the temp certainly helped. Overall we were happy with the results.

For the glaze I ended up combining some homemade Raspberry Jam, Maple Syrup, brown sugar, Apple Juice, Homemade Rib Rub and some Cayenne Pepper. It was what we had on hand, but tasted better than expected.

Thanks for the tips, they were very helpful!

Looks mouth watering. If you steep your thinned down basting mixture on the stovetop, let it cool, then inject, all that candy flavor get into the meat. Also, you can use a propane torch to glaze at the end , if you get in a pinch.

 

[ericm007]

Just wanted to say thanks for all of the tips in this thread. I did the "Twice Smoked Ham" for Easter based on this info and everyone said it was some of the best ham they ever had.

I used a 9lb Smoked and fully cooked Butt Ham.

Here were my basic steps.
Cut ham as shown above, rub ham, I used Bad Byron’s Butt Rub.
Heat grill to 200⁰, I also used smoker tube with cherry wood chips.
Place directly on grate and smoke for about 80 mins.
Make glaze during this time.
Increase to 350⁰-375⁰, go to 400⁰ if needed, and cook until 140⁰ internal, about 90 mins., glaze a few times during this phase.

For my glaze:

Place in small saucepan and whisk during cooking
½ cup packed Dark Brown sugar
½ cup honey or pure maple syrup
2 tbsp yellow mustard
1-2 tsp of rub, depending on taste, same as ham was rubbed with
¼ of OJ or pineapple juice, ½ cup was too much and took too long to cook down, but you can thin as needed.

Take care, Eric

 

[C. Keeper]

Sure looks good.

 

[Mac2bdr]

Looks like it came out great!

 

[WonderMonkey]

I recently filled my freezer with fresh ham and plan to use some of the advice here to fully cook, etc.

HOWEVER .... until now I've bought a good spiral cut, fully cooked ham and smoked it and it has turned out very well. I'd be MORE THAN HAPPY to learn what I'm missing once I do my fresh ham.

Here is how I've done my fully cooked hams, if you also want to be as lazy as I've been.

From my crappy blog ....

I've smoked about 10 hams over the past few years. I've used the same basic method each time with one exception, which I'll outline in the "cold smoke" step.


Each ham I've smoked has been "Already Baked" or "Fully Cooked" or anything else which signifies that it has already been completely cooked at some point. If your ham hasn't been completely cooked, you can't do the cold smoke step.


See the photos at the end to help get a visual of most of the steps.


The basic steps are:

• Take the ham out of the package and lightly rinse it. Pat dry.
• Cold smoke the ham for a few hours. How many is up to you but I did five hours. I cold smoked it by using a pellet tube. Make sure to keep the pellet tube as far away from the ham as possible to reduce heat. See the following link for smoke tubes (I'm not an affiliate): https://www.amazon.com/s?k=smoke+tube&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
• After you finish cold smoking, bring the ham inside and continue on with the next steps.
• Slather with mustard and coat with brown sugar.
• If you have cold smoked your ham, you will now basically be heating up the ham and creating the glaze.
• If you cold smoked ...
  • Put ham in smoker (or oven) at 225 for 2 hours.
• If you did NOTcold smoke
  • Smoke for 2 hrs on 225 using apple (or other fruit) wood
• Line pan with aluminum foil (see a photo below), spritz ham with pineapple juice, dump a bit more juice in the pan, and use more aluminum foil to loosely encase. This allows for some self-basting. Put under heat for 1 more hour. This can be in your smoker or your oven
• Remove top layer of aluminum foil and apply more brown sugar. Squirt well with pineapple juice but be careful to not spray too much or the saturated brown sugar will start to run off. Using toothpicks, attach pineapple and cherries as desired. Put back in smoker or oven for 1 hour to create a nice glaze.
• Rest your ham for 20-30 minutes because it's had a tough day

I decided to use the above method as it seemed fairly full-proof (fool-proof?) and I didn't want to mess up when the family was coming over.


The ham turned out to be very tasty and everybody enjoyed it. Enough so that I would have to think twice before deviating from the basic method I used.


Typical timetable:
11:00 pm (day before) - Put under cold smoke if you are going to do that.
4:00 am - Take ham out of the fridge
6:00 am - Heat up smoker, prep ham
7:05 am - Put in for smoking
9:05 am - Take out
9:15 am - Put in for basting
10:15 am - Take out
10:30 am - Put in for glaze
11:30 am - Take out and let rest
12 - Serve


A few lessons learned:

• Start the entire process 1 hour before you actually put the ham into the smoker. This is mostly to allow the smoker to get to the correct temperature. Additionally, you can then get the ham ready in a more relaxed manner.
• Cold smoking for a few hours before applying the brown sugar allows the smoke to get on the sides of the ham more. Otherwise you have blocked that area with the brown sugar. Sure, the brown sugar will absorb some smoke (I think), but I REALLY like the cold smoking method more.
• Monitor the water and drip pan as the ham releases quite a bit of juice during the process. I had an overflow issue before I figured this out
• I left the smoker door open too long when I was messing around with things. Too much heat was lost. I need to be better prepared to minimize this
• I need a small table near my smoker to do things on. I had to use the top of the smoker and didn't have enough room for my "stuff".

Everything considered it was a successful smoke.

 

[fullhouse32]

That looks very yummy

 

[ericm007]

Nice writeup WonderMonkey!!

 

[WonderMonkey]

Nice writeup WonderMonkey!!

Thanks! It's a few years old so I'm going to redo it with my recteq. I wrote that for my crappy blog so I can go back and refer to it and remember what the heck I did.

 

[DenStinett]

We love to Double Smoke a Spiral Cut Ham
250 for 2.5-3.0 hours with a Smoke Tube loaded with Comp Blend Pellets added
Glaze with 100% Maple Syrup for the last hours
Smoke until we get an internal of 140