Cherry and Almond Glazed Ham

We'll be heading up north to my sister's for Easter next weekend which means none of the lovely leftover ham for sandwiches or ham bone for soups. The only cure for that was to bake our own ham this week.

My sister is planning on making Alton Brown's City Ham which is absolutely fabulous. We didn't want to make the exact same thing so Matt suggested we do a riff on the recipe using almonds & tart cherries instead of the crushed ginger cookies & kirsh instead of bourbon for the liquid. I agreed with him that those flavors would be fabulous with ham & off we went.

The almonds give a little crunch to the glaze which is perhaps unusual but a nice added texture. Then you have the mixture of flavors tart from the cherries, sweet from the kirsh & brown sugar & a little bite from the mustard. Mix that all with the saltiness of the ham, yum!

We had a relatively small ham, only 3 pounds so it baked quite quickly. Plan on extra time to reach temperature if cooking a larger piece of meat, I've added notes regarding that in the recipe.

Cherry & Almond Glazed Ham
(adapted from Alton Brown)

1 3lb smoked ham (the kind that is already cook & just needs to be heated)
brown sugar
Dijon mustard
1/4 c slivered almonds
3 T dried tart cherries
kirsh (in a spray bottle)

Preheat oven to 250 F.

Rinse & drain ham throughly. Place cut side down in a roasting pan. Use a small knife to cut diamonds into the skin & first few layers of fat .

Tent with foil & insert a thermometer into the center of the ham. Bake for 2 hours (3 -4 hours for a bigger ham) until the temperature registers 130 F. Use tongs to remove the diamonds of skin & fat that comes with it.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Dry the ham & them coat with the mustard. Then press on a coating of brown sugar.

Put the almonds & cherries in a food processor & pulse until about the texture of sand & slightly sticky. Press the almond/cherry mixture all over the ham. Spray all over with the kirsh.

Cook until thermometer reaches 140 F about 30 - 1 hour.

Let sit 1/2 hour before serving.

We served the ham with Potato Hash with Bacon & Melted Onions, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted.
© 2007-2010 Kathy Lewinski