My mum gave me the recipe for the Thanksgiving ham. On my birthday, she would prepare this simple meal. made with brown sugar, honey, maraschino cherries, pineapple slices, and many more delicious ingredients. You’ll adore this ham supper for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other special event. It’s also delicious year-round.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 2 hrs |
| Additional Time: | 10 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 30 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
Ingredients
- 1 cup maple syrup
- 1 cup orange juice
- 1 cup ginger ale
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup honey
- 1 (10 ounce) jar maraschino cherries, halved
- 1 (12 pound) fully-cooked, bone-in ham
- large heat-resistant nylon oven bag (such as Reynolds® Oven Bags)
- 1 (15.25 ounce) can pineapple slices in juice, drained
- 1 box round wooden toothpicks
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Mix together maple syrup, orange juice, ginger ale, brown sugar, and honey in a medium bowl. Stir in juice from the maraschino cherries, and half of the cherries.
- Score the outer edge of the ham with a sharp knife in a diamond pattern. Cuts should be about 1/4 inch deep to allow the ham to soak up the juice.
- Place ham into an oven bag, and carefully pour the juice mixture over it, keeping all of the juice in the bag (it may look like there is too much juice, but the ham will soak it up while baking).
- Place pineapples onto the top of the ham, and secure with toothpicks. Place cherries into the centers of the rings, and secure with toothpicks also. Tie the end of the bag closed with the ties provided, place in a large roasting pan, and cut a few small slits in the top of the oven bag.
- Bake ham for 2 hours in the preheated oven. The internal temperature should be 140 degrees F (60 degrees C) when done. Be sure not to touch the bone when taking the temperature.
- Remove ham from bag to a serving plate, and let stand for 10 minutes before carving.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 667 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 28 g |
| Cholesterol | 127 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 42 g |
| Saturated Fat | 15 g |
| Sodium | 2918 mg |
| Sugars | 23 g |
| Fat | 42 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
I have followed this recipe for several years resulting in many well received delicious hams. Our holiday tradition that had changed from bake it yourself to purchasing the top brand of spiral sliced ham is now back to cook it yourself using this recipe.
Amazing! Really easy and tastes out of this world 10/10
I did it last year, it came out really nice . My family liked it. They requested for this year again
I made this exact recipe and it was perfect. The best ham I ever had! It was my first time ever making ham for Thanksgiving! Try this, you will not regret it.
Made this for a couple of Christmas dinners for the family and its great. Flavor is sweet and tangy and it keeps the ham quite moist which is not an easy task.
I have a lot of cooking experience, but this was my first time making a ham in the oven. The ingredients are fine, but if you follow the cooking directions you will have a dry, tough ham – which is exactly what I had for my Thanksgiving meal yesterday :C. After researching and talking to people who have made many good hams, my advice is DO NOT just put it in any roasting pan with the juice, tie it off, make a couple vents, and let it bake like the instructions tell you to do here.. if you want to make this, I suggest putting the ham and juices in an oven bag, fold the top closed but leave the bag untied, and stop to baste the ham the entire time you cook it(google how often to baste based on size of ham etc.
Delicious for the entire fam!
My entire family truly enjoyed eating this dish and everyone rated it a “5.” I will definitely make this dish again and again as this was mighty tasty and we cannot say enough about this dish.
Too many ingredients… and the cherry juice was overkill.
Soo yummy!
I think this recipe was ok…but after using it twice, I think it has too much liquid. It creates a watery diluted glaze that doesn’t give much flavor to the ham. If I used it again, I would cut back on the OJ and gingerale and add more brown sugar.
Great recipe. We used two cans of pineapple to completely cover the 13.5 lb ham. We cooked the ham in a large baking dish and covered it with foil the night before and then carved it up. We placed the sliced pieces of ham is the juice over night and reheated the next day in the baking dish in the juice at 350 for apprx 1 hour checking at 30 minutes and moving any pieces that were still cold into the warmed juice . Everyone said the ham was so delicious =)
Yes, I used pineapple orange apple juice instead of just orange juice
I found this recipe about 5 years ago and have been making it every Thanksgiving since. It was a hit from day 1.
I made this one year and it was so sweet and yummy. I got a lot of compliments. But the years after I tried, I felt like the ham wasn’t sweet. It still tasted salty. Does anyone have a recommendation on what I might be doing wrong? Kind of sad I cant get it right.
Delicious! Did a few things different than the written recipe. I brought a butt half (Cooks brand) and I marinated it the night before. I did not use a cooking bag but put the marinade at the bottom of roasting pan and basted twice. Served it for Easter dinner and everyone loved it.
Made for Thanksgiving 2017 and what a hit with the family. I used a spiral ham as I am usually a last minute shopper and that was all that was left. Still turned out really good. Moist and juicy. Will use again and again. Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Have to admit, I didn’t follow the recipe as written for ingredients but certain that if I had there would have been a 5-star result… I used what I had on hand [don’t like maraschino cherries and no ginger ale on hand]: fresh pineapple chunks; whole cloves inserted all over the ham at about 1-inch apart; passionfruit juice (yes passionfruit!!!); and the rest of the ingredients as written in the recipe. I did follow the instructions as directed. The result was the most juicy, tasty ham I’ve ever made! It uncharacteristically disappeared and received more rave reviews than my turkey at Thanksgiving this year. And that says a lot!
I followed the recipe exactly, and the ham did have good flavor and it looked GREAT! But that sauce was expensive, and NONE of it was absorbed by the ham – in fact, the ham rendered down and I ended up with more sauce that I started with. It was a spiral ham, and I put the spiral cut end on the bottom to give the BEST chance for absorption, and I did score the other end to help with this also, it just did not work. We had a LOT of leftover ham (there were just four of us), so I put up the rest for the freezer in zip lock bags. A few slices of ham and a couple dippers of sauce in each bag – it should freeze well and preserve well this way, and it kept me from just pitching all that sauce! Next time, I will use pineapple slices and cherries on the ham, but the sauce will just be the envelope of glaze that comes with the ham.
Delicious recipe. Just made it for Christmas dinner and everyone was happy!
I have made this ham twice now, once for Easter and the other for Thanksgiving. The ham was such a hit during Thanksgiving that it overshadowed the turkey that was being served and I had practically no leftovers of the ham. I let my ham sit in the juices overnight in the bag and I also found that the ham does not bake completely at 2 hours so I have been giving it an extra hour and it is just fine then. I also used the juices for gravy and it was DELICIOUS This is definitely a keeper and a new tradition has been born!