Skip the long wait and high price at the deli—this 5-ingredient baked honey ham comes together in under 1.5, tastes sweet and savory, and fills your kitchen with that classic holiday aroma. You just need a spiral-cut ham, honey, brown sugar, mustard and a splash of apple cider for a dish that looks impressive but couldn’t be any easier.
Why This Honey Baked Ham Stands Out
- Super Easy: Not only is this honey baked ham unbelievably easy to make, it’s restaurant-quality ham for a fraction of the price.
- All the Holidays: Perfect for the holidays or anytime your family craves a simple yet amazing ham.
- Very Affordable: This Honey Baked Ham tastes like you’ve spent much more time on it than you really did; expect requests for the recipe.
- Family and Friends Love it: This is the easy honey ham recipe you’ll return to over an over again because your family will request it on repeat.
Key Recipe Ingredients
You’ll need just 5 simple ingredients for the best ham recipe:
- Brown Sugar provides a warm molasses sweetness to the sauce. Be sure to pack it down tight when measuring.
- Whole Grain Mustard, sometimes known as country style mustard, is key to the delectable honey mustard sauce. It’s not your average yellow mustard.
- Honey works together with the brown sugar to bring a tantalizing sweetness to the salty ham. This unfiltered honey is my favorite, as it’s organic and budget friendly.
- Apple Cider or Juice brings a sweet acidity to the basting sauce. Be sure you’re getting sweet cider and not cider vinegar.
- Spiral-Sliced Ham is easies to use, as it will already be pre-sliced. However, you can use a regular ham and slice it thinly yourself.
* Tip: We use whole grain mustard for this Honey Mustard Chicken with Curry, which showcases how huge a difference the style of mustard makes in a recipe
Substitutions and Variations
- Mustard: We highly recommend using the whole grain mustard with whole seeds, as it has the best depth of flavor, but you can also use dijon mustard or honey mustard, if you prefer.
- Ham: We’ve found spiral-sliced, bone-in ham to work really well. However, you also use boneless ham and slice it thinly yourself. Similarly, you can use a regular bone-in ham and slice it thinly prior to using in the recipe.
- Brown Sugar: You can use either light brown or dark brown sugar. Dark brown sugar will give a deeper, darker flavor and color.
- Cider/Juice: Our recipe calls for apple cider juice, which has more depth of flavor and sweetness than regular apple juice. However, you can use 100% apple juice if you can’t find apple cider. Please note: do not use apple cider vinegar, which is completely different from sweet apple cider.
- Corn Starch: This honey baked ham sauce is more like an au jus, rather than a gravy, and will be thinner and juicier in texture. If you’d like your sauce thicker, make a cornstarch slurry with fully dissolved cornstarch and water.
Step-By-Step Recipe Instructions
- Make Sauce: Mix together apple cider, brown sugar, mustard, and honey in a bowl. Mix well to fully incorporate basting sauce.
- Bake: Place ham in a 13×9 or similar-sized baking dish. Coat ham with a generous amount of sauce. Bake for 60-70 minutes, basting thoroughly every 15 minutes.
Pro Tips for success
- Ham: Be sure to get the spiral sliced ham if you want ease of slicing; plus, the juices really sink in with the pre-sliced ham cooking in the oven.
- Sauce: Basting sauce can be made several days ahead of time and reheated when ready to use.
- Baste: Don’t skimp on the basting sessions – baste ham every 15 minutes during baking, for juicy results.
- Serving: To serve the ham slices in a dish, simply arrange the slices in your choice of serving dish and brush the sauce in between slices and on top. This ensures that every slice will be juicy and flavorful!
- Make Ahead: Do the “serving” step above, cover, and keep warm until ready to serve. Always serve with extra sauce.
