1. Spread the mustard over the top of the ham with a rubber spatula.
2. Sprinkle the cloves over the mustard.
3. Top it with the brown sugar.
An alternative is to make a glaze with the mustard, brown sugar and some pineapple juice or water. brush a layer of this on the ham and then sprinkle with the cloves
4. Pour some red wine into the roasting pan, as this will make a great basting liquid.
5. Slow-roast the ham for 2-3 hours at 300 degrees basting lightly so you don’t wash the glaze off. Bake it to an internal temperature of 165-180 degrees
From Recipes from a German Grandma Background
When Grandma took a notion to bake a ham, she used generous amounts of Grandpa’s homemade wine to baste it with while it was cooking. The spicy aroma of the ham, wine, cloves, and brown sugar baking in the oven left no doubt about what was for dinner! In the old days, she’d buy a real smoked ham, with the bone in and skin on. After having the skin taken off, it was boiled to get some of the salt out of the meat, then covered with brown sugar and cloves, and baked in wine. Those hams were truly memorable!
Chef Stephen discusses hams, then gives his own recipe:
“The old-fashioned gourmet hams are cold-smoked and cured, sometimes for up to 6 years. Most of the hams on the market today are not cured at all. They are injected with water and liquid smoke. They taste okay to me, though the flavor is sort of like jellied lunch meat, compared with the taste of a real cured ham, which has a chewy but tender texture and a mellow, lingering smoky flavor that keeps getting better with each bite. These hams are difficult to find, but can be ordered.
“We’ve all seen the beautiful magazine and recipe-book pictures of hams that have been scored with a crisscross pattern, then studded with whole cloves. They do look pretty, but I haven’t found that the whole cloves add much flavor. I use ground cloves. The amounts of each ingredient will vary according to the size of ham—half or whole, boned or bone-in—that you are baking. As in all roasting, the ham is done best at a low temperature.”
An alternative to buying a nice cured and smoked ham is to do it yourself. Here is how I did it.
I put this on a Kamado Grill (similar to a Big Green Egg) and smoked it with indirect heat and this time I used mahaogany wood, but you could use hickory, cherry or apple or any wood you like. I would caution of using too much Mesquite, that is quite strong. I set the temperature to about 200 degrees.
This is after about 8 hours of smoking. It had a very nice flavor already.
Then I baked it in a roasting pan with the red wine, and glaze, basting every hour and applying more glaze.
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