Ham with Pineapple Mustard Glaze

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! As for today, it's all over but the leftovers. Amazing isn't it, how quickly a day can fly by and be yesterday's news. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling exhausted and oh so thankful for the refrigerator full of leftovers - particularly this glorious ham!

 

This is another one of those times that we can thank Martha. This Pineapple-Mustard Glazed Ham was really delicious and worthy of center stage at our Christmas dinner table. Best of all, the glaze could be prepped the day before and kept in the refrigerator, which made it much easier on the cook. She was harassed enough trying to deal with a bunch of "issues" caused by cooking on a brand new stove. I love trying out new recipes when I'm under the pressure of producing a perfect holiday meal, but combined with dealing with the learning curve brought on adjusting to that new kitchen appliance I was so quick to brag about - well, I'm thinking a long "rest" in the local psychiatric facility may be my only option. 

For the glaze, fresh pineapple is peeled, cut into rings then cored and simmered in a sugar syrup until transparent then mixed with grainy mustard. I was afraid the pineapple would fall apart, but thankfully it remained in one piece and even held onto the ham all by itself without the benefit of toothpicks or anything. For appearances sake, it would have been much prettier had we used an old fashioned uncut ham, but I'm a new convert to the spiral cut version so tried it on that instead. It was really quite delicious though in hindsight I'd remove the pineapple from the syrup when it's transparent and tender, then reduce the sugar syrup more. I think it would have been shinier and given a prettier end product, but as far as flavor goes, this glaze is a real keeper.

We had the ham along with a sweet mustard sauce, corn pudding, a fingerling potato salad with sherry mustard vinaigrette, steamed asparagus, and some home-made single rise dinner rolls. I'll be sharing the recipes with you all later. Dessert was pretty special too but I'll keep that a secret for now. You'll just have to keep coming back to check, now won't ya?

As for the rest of today - well, the big guy's cooking breakfast then we're heading out to pick up an oven thermometer and a timer. Hopefully both will resolve the issues we (I) had with the new stove yesterday. I have to admit this year's Christmas dinner was a challenge and pretty hard on the old ego. It's rather humbling to say the least when perfection isn't a word one can use over their holiday celebration dinner - not ANY of it.

It's even more of a pain when she's cookin' for her in-laws and can't use any of the swear words that she normally uses to express her frustration! Ha. Serves me right for braggin' about all those BTU's now doesn't it? Happy Boxing Day, y'all.

Comments

[Mags]

Awww June, sorry to hear that you had to deal with stove issues on Christmas. That ham looks wonderful though!

[Sarah G]

Nice recipe and I rarely think to buy fresh pineapple when doing a ham. Thanks for that bit of advice with the syrup glaze.

[June]

Mags - stove issues resolved I think. We bought an oven thermometer and the darn oven was 30 degrees too cold. Mmmm

Sarah - the recipe is a great find. I know, I had used canned or dried pineapple in the past, and now I wonder why I did that.