Meat Dishes
Baked Ham with Glazes
The Christmas centrepiece: a gammon joint simmered until just tender, then skinned, scored, studded with cloves and baked in a hot oven with a sticky glaze. Four tried-and-tested glazes, each set out in full: honey and mustard, marmalade and orange, maple and mustard, and cola and black treacle.
- Serves 10
- Plenty of leftovers
- About 2 hrs 30 min, mostly simmering
- Four glazes to choose from
- Simmer up to 2 days ahead
- British
Method
Check the salt as in our Boiled Ham recipe: most supermarket gammon needs no soaking, but if a thin slice simmered for 2–3 minutes tastes too salty, soak the joint overnight in cold water.
Put the gammon (2.5 kg) in a large pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. If the water tastes very salty, drain and start again with fresh cold water. Skim, then add the onion (1 onion), carrots (2 carrots), celery (1), bay (3 bay leaves), peppercorns (a little) and 4 of the cloves.
Simmer very gently, half-covered, for 20 minutes per 500 g (1 hour 40 minutes for a 2.5 kg joint), topping up with boiling water to keep it covered. It finishes cooking in the oven. Leave it in the liquid for 30 minutes, then lift it out. Strain and keep the stock. You can stop here and chill the ham for up to 2 days.
Heat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C, gas 6). Snip off the string and peel away the rind, leaving an even layer of fat about 5 mm to 1 cm thick. Score the fat into diamonds about 2.5 cm apart, cutting through the fat but not into the meat, and push a clove (30) into the centre of each diamond.
Make the glaze you have chosen. Glaze 1, honey and mustard: stir the honey (4 tbsp), wholegrain mustard (2 tbsp) and demerara sugar (2 tbsp) together in a bowl.
Glaze 2, marmalade and orange: warm the marmalade (150 g) in a small pan with the orange zest and juice (1 orange), mustard (1 tbsp) and sugar (1 tbsp), stirring until melted, then bubble for 2–3 minutes until it is thick and syrupy.
Glaze 3, maple and mustard: whisk the maple syrup (150 ml), mustard (2 tbsp), Worcestershire sauce (1 tbsp) and soy sauce (1 tbsp) together. It is runny, so spoon it over rather than brushing and baste often.
Glaze 4, cola and black treacle: boil the cola (500 ml) hard in a wide pan for 10–15 minutes until reduced to about 100 ml of dark syrup, then stir in the treacle (2 tbsp). Spread it over the scored fat, then mix the mustard powder (2 tsp) with the sugar (2 tbsp) and pat it on to the sticky surface.
Line a roasting tin with a double layer of foil and sit the ham in it, fat side up. Spoon or brush over half the glaze and bake for 15 minutes. Spoon over the rest and bake for another 15–25 minutes, basting with the juices every 5–10 minutes and turning the tin so it colours evenly, until the glaze is bubbling, sticky and dark at the edges. If the ham went in cold from the fridge, give it 20–30 minutes at 180°C (fan 160°C) loosely covered with foil before you glaze it, so it heats through (60°C in the centre).
Rest the ham for at least 15 minutes, then carve into slices and spoon over the juices from the tin. Serve hot with roast or mashed potatoes and Cumberland sauce, or cold with pickles and chutney.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
See also
Chef’s notes
- Which glaze? Honey and mustard is the crowd-pleaser; marmalade and orange is the most festive; maple and mustard is the darkest and most savoury; the cola and black treacle glaze gives a shiny, almost toffee-like crust and is best on a ham simmered in cola (see our Boiled Ham notes).
- Each glaze is enough for a 2–3 kg joint. For a bigger ham (4–6 kg), make one and a half or double quantities and allow 15–17 minutes per 500 g simmering.
- Smoked or unsmoked? Unsmoked is the usual Christmas choice and lets the glaze shine; smoked goes best with the maple and cola glazes.
- Oven-only method: if you would rather not simmer, soak the joint if needed, wrap it loosely in foil with 150 ml cider in a roasting tin and bake at 180°C (fan 160°C, gas 4) for about 30 minutes per 500 g, until 68°C in the centre. Unwrap, take off the rind, score, stud and glaze as above.
- Sugary glazes burn quickly: watch the ham for the last 10 minutes and cover loosely with foil if the edges are getting too dark.
- In the US: most supermarket hams are sold fully cooked. Skip the simmering, heat the ham wrapped in foil at 160°C (325°F) until about 50°C (120°F) in the centre, roughly 12–15 minutes per pound, then raise the heat and glaze as above.
- Leftovers keep for 4–5 days in the fridge. Use them in sandwiches, pea and ham soup, ham and leek pie or a carbonara.
The glazed Christmas ham
Glazing a ham with sugar or honey is an old idea: Georgian cooks coated boiled hams in breadcrumbs and brown sugar and browned them before the fire or with a hot salamander iron, and the clove-studded diamond pattern became the classic Victorian Christmas look.
The cola-simmered ham comes from the American South and was made famous in Britain by Nigella Lawson; maple glazes are North American, and marmalade glazes are a thoroughly British twist.
How this recipe was developed
We compared glazed hams from Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein and Christopher Kimball’s America’s Test Kitchen with the best-rated British versions from BBC Food and BBC Good Food and Nigella Lawson’s ham in Coca-Cola, and picked the four glazes that came up most often in the top-rated recipes.
- Simmer first, then bake hot and briefly. Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, BBC Good Food and BBC Food all simmer the gammon and finish it in a hot oven for 25–60 minutes; we simmer for 20 minutes per 500 g because the oven finishes the cooking.
- Glaze in two goes, and baste. Gordon Ramsay pours on half the glaze for 15 minutes, then the rest and bastes, turning the tin; America’s Test Kitchen also glazes in stages so the sugar never burns.
- Honey and mustard. BBC Food’s honey-glazed gammon (4.8/5, 155 ratings) and BBC Good Food’s honey-glazed ham (4.7/5, 133 ratings) use honey, mustard and dark sugar; Gordon Ramsay sharpens his honey glaze with sherry vinegar. We use wholegrain mustard and demerara for texture.
- Marmalade and orange. The Hairy Bikers’ honey and marmalade gammon for BBC Food (4.9/5, 47 ratings), James Martin’s marmalade gammon (5.0/5, 11 ratings) and Jamie Oliver’s roasted marmalade ham. We warm and reduce it so it clings, as America’s Test Kitchen does with its maple-orange glaze.
- Maple and mustard. Gordon Ramsay’s maple and mustard glazed ham for BBC Good Food (4.8/5, 93 ratings) uses maple syrup, wholegrain mustard, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce; America’s Test Kitchen pairs maple with marmalade and Dijon.
- Cola and black treacle. From Nigella Lawson’s ham in Coca-Cola, one of the most-cooked British Christmas recipes online: treacle spread over the fat, then mustard powder and demerara patted on. We reduce cola to a syrup for extra depth.
- Cloves, scoring and fat. Everyone studs the scored fat with cloves; Jamie Oliver trims the fat to about 1 cm so it renders and crisps.
- US hams. America’s Test Kitchen heats a fully cooked ham only to about 50°C (120°F) so it does not dry out; we use that for the US note.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- Gordon Ramsay: Honey Glazed Ham
- Jamie Oliver: How to cook the perfect roast ham (roasted marmalade ham)
- Rick Stein: Baked ham with new potatoes and salad cream (Rick Stein’s Cornwall, BBC Food) (3.9/5, 11 ratings)
- BBC Food: Honey-glazed gammon (4.8/5, 155 ratings)
- BBC Good Food (Esther Clark): Honey-glazed ham (4.7/5, 133 ratings)
- BBC Food (The Hairy Bikers): Honey and marmalade-glazed gammon joint (4.9/5, 47 ratings)
- BBC Food (James Martin): Marmalade-glazed gammon (5.0/5, 11 ratings)
- Gordon Ramsay: Maple & mustard glazed ham (BBC Good Food) (4.8/5, 93 ratings)
- Christopher Kimball (America's Test Kitchen): Glazed Spiral-Sliced Ham (maple-orange and cherry-port glazes)
- Jamie Oliver: Mulled wine glazed ham
- Nigella Lawson: Ham in Coca-Cola
- BBC Good Food: Christmas ham recipes collection
- Cookeryonline: How to Cook Ham (our original guide)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.