This recipe for ham roast has a distinctive, rich flavor that’s both salty and sweet. The outer edges of this baked ham caramelize during cooking — offering a slight crunch. The meat inside is tender and juicy. The honey mustard and brown sugar glaze adds the perfect amount of sweetness. We love this ham as a traditional main course for Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Close-up of juicy spiral cut ham with a shiny honey glaze on a wooden cutting board.

A good holiday ham shouldn’t feel complicated—and this one isn’t. This is the exact method I use every year to keep a spiral-cut smoked ham juicy, evenly heated, and lacquered in a glossy, sticky brown-sugar-honey-mustard glaze.

Ingredients You Will Need For This Honey Mustard Holiday Ham:

Ingredients for honey baked ham displayed on a counter, including spices, brown sugar, honey, mustard, butter, water, and an 8-pound spiral ham.

What Kind of Ham to Buy

This recipe is specifically for pre-cooked spiral-cut smoked hams weighing 8–10 pounds. Larger hams (16–18 lb) need double the glaze and extra bake time, but the method stays the same.

The goal isn’t to cook the ham from scratch—it’s to warm it gently, keep every slice moist, and infuse it with a glaze that caramelizes beautifully in the last stretch of baking. I walk you through exactly how to cover it, when to glaze it, and how to keep it from drying out.

Avoid fresh hams– they cook like pork roasts and require a completely different process. They won’t look or taste like the traditional holiday ham you expect.

Where to find them? Most grocery stores carry 8–10 lb hams around the holidays; big-box stores carry the 16–18 lb size, often pre-sliced.

Thick, glossy honey glaze coating a spiral baked ham in a tight close-up shot.

Make This Holiday Ham

Prep the Oven, Roasting Pan & Ham

This step sets you up for success. Spiral-cut hams dry out easily, so I always add water to the roasting pan and seal the foil tightly to trap steam. After years of testing holiday hams, this is the single most reliable way to keep every slice moist.

What you’ll do:

Preheat oven to 325°F and position the rack.
Unwrap the ham, discard the flavor packet (I never use it), and place the ham cut-side down in a large roasting pan.
Add one cup water to create gentle steam during the first bake.
Prepare a large sheet of heavy-duty foil for covering.

Making The Honey Mustard Ham Glaze

This glaze is balanced to cling to the ham instead of sliding off, and the ingredient ratios are based on repeated testing of spiral hams from different brands and sizes.

What you’ll do:

Melt butter.
Mix in brown sugar, honey, spicy brown mustard, salt, pepper, and ground cloves.
If using whole cloves later, reduce ground cloves to ⅛ teaspoon for the right aroma without overpowering the glaze.
Set aside until the ham is ready to glaze.

First Bake

Covering the ham tightly is essential—this isn’t optional for spiral cuts. You’re reheating an already-cooked ham, and the goal is even warming without losing moisture. The foil creates a steaming environment that keeps the slices juicy.

What you’ll do:

Cover the ham tightly with heavy-duty foil, sealing all edges.
Bake for about 1½ hours, or until only 30 minutes of cook time remain.
Remove ham from oven and set the foil aside for later.

Glaze & Final Bake

This is where the ham gets its shine and flavor. Brushing the glaze between the slices and basting with pan juices creates deeper flavor instead of just coating the outside. I’ve tested this method with multiple hams, and this timing gives the glaze enough time to caramelize without burning.

What you’ll do:

Brush glaze generously over the ham, letting it run between slices.
Add whole cloves if you love the classic holiday look (totally optional).
Bake uncovered for the final 30 minutes.
Spoon the pan juices over the ham two to three times during this stage.
Ham should reach an internal temperature of 140°F.

Step-by-step images showing how to glaze, baste, and rest a spiral baked ham.

Rest, Slice & Serve

Resting prevents the juices from running out as you slice, which makes the ham noticeably more tender. This is the same resting technique used for roasts and turkey and is especially important with spiral hams.

What you’ll do:

Spoon some roasting juices over the top for extra shine and moisture.
Tent the ham loosely with foil.
Let it rest for 15 minutes before serving.

Ham is a traditional main course for Easter, Christmas, New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving. We love it with all the traditional holiday side dishes, including green bean casserole, creamy mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls.

You could also add a little bit of sweetness to your meal with succulent slices of freshly grilled pineapple or pineapple coleslaw.

Making Ham Ahead of the Holidays

One of the best parts about serving a glazed spiral ham is how well it works for make-ahead entertaining. I’ve tested this method several times for holiday dinners, and the ham stays incredibly moist when it’s reheated correctly.

Make the Glaze Ahead – You can prepare the glaze up to two or three days in advance, and it actually develops deeper flavor as it rests in the fridge. When you’re ready to use it, simply warm it gently until it becomes pourable and brushable again.

Make the Ham a Day Before – If your oven is packed on the holiday itself, baking the ham the day before works extremely well. Cook it according to the recipe, let it cool, and store it tightly covered with some of the pan juices. When reheating, keep the ham covered and warm it at 300°F so the slices stay tender instead of drying out.

Prep in Advance Without Cooking – Another great time-saver is doing all the prep the day before: unwrap the ham, place it in the roasting pan, and mix the glaze. Store both in the refrigerator separately. On the day of, all you need to do is bake the ham, brush on the glaze, and finish it in the oven.

Storing Leftovers

Fridge: Four to five days, tightly wrapped
Freezer: Up to two months
Reheating: Warm in a covered dish at 300°F with a splash of water

Leftover ham is fantastic in scalloped potatoes, omelets, fried rice or soup.

Recipe for Ham Roast

4.95 from 38 votes

This Ham Roast recipe creates a tender, flavorful spiral ham coated in a rich honey glaze, making it an easy and delicious choice for any holiday meal.

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 2

Total Time 2 15

Servings

Print Recipe Pin Recipe Review Recipe

Ingredients

8 pound bone-in spiral-cut smoked ham
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup honey
¼ cup spicy brown mustard
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground cloves, or ⅛ teaspoon if using whole cloves
1 cup water
whole cloves, optional garnish

Instructions

Remove or lower your middle oven rack in your oven before preheating. Preheat the oven to 325°F. You will need a large roasting pan and an extra-large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil.
Remove all the packaging from the smoked ham. If it came with a seasoning packet, I typically just discard it. Place the ham into the roasting pan.
In a small bowl, stir together the unsalted butter, light brown sugar, honey, spicy mustard, salt, black pepper, and ground cloves. If you plan to use whole cloves, you can cut back the amount of ground cloves in your glaze to ⅛ teaspoon. Set aside.
Add the water to the bottom of the roasting pan and cover the ham tightly with the large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Make sure that you seal the edges well so that no steam escapes. This helps to ensure that your ham stays moist and heats through evenly.
Bake for about 1 ½ hours (or all but the last 30 minutes of bake time according to the size of your ham). Remove the ham from the oven and remove the piece of aluminum foil from the ham. Set the foil aside.
Using a pastry brush, brush the glaze over the entire surface of the ham allowing the glaze mixture to drip between the slices of the ham.
If you want to add the optional whole cloves to garnish your ham, carefully and randomly poke the whole cloves into the ham. Place the ham back into the oven, uncovered, for the remaining 30 minutes of cook time. Two or three times during the last 30 minutes of bake time, spoon some of the juices from the roasting pan over the top of the ham to baste your ham and keep it moist.
Your ham should have an internal temperature of approximately 140°F. Allow your ham roast to rest on the counter, lightly tented with the reserved piece of aluminum foil, for 15 minutes before serving.

Notes

You can find these hams in the refrigerated meat section of your local grocery store. They are roughly 8-10 pounds per ham. You will need to allow about 13 minutes per pound of bake time.
You can find larger-sized hams at the big box stores that are roughly 16-18 pounds. They often come already spiral sliced and will also contain a flavor packet. I discard the flavor packet and use the glaze in this recipe. You would need to double the amount of glaze if cooking a larger ham.
Remember, these smoked hams are already cooked through. You are actually just warming them through and flavoring them with this honey mustard glaze. You DO NOT want a fresh ham for this recipe. Fresh hams need special cooking instructions, and while they are delicious, they will not look like the traditional holiday ham that is so famous.
I highly recommend using a disposable aluminum roasting tray and heavy-duty aluminum foil for cooking these hams. I like to place the disposable roasting tray onto a large rimmed baking sheet to make transportation to and from the oven much easier. It is a bonus that it makes clean-up super easy too.
I like to reserve the juices from the roasting pan to spoon over the roasted ham, being sure to get the juices into all those score marks to add extra moisture and flavor to my ham. My family even likes to spoon some of the juices onto their individual servings on their plate, like you would gravy over turkey.
I like to use a standard wildflower or clover honey (like what you can get in the honey bear bottle at the grocery store) for this recipe. When you use the more unique, or gourmet, honey, then their flavors tend to not blend as well with the mustard. This is one of those times when the basic ingredient is the best choice for the recipe.
This glaze is very easy and can be customized with your favorite mustard. I often substitute a dijon or yellow mustard for the spicy golden mustard.
The whole cloves studding the ham is an optional garnish that not only will give your ham added flavor but also makes a beautiful presentation. If you like the flavor of the cloves but not the work or look of the whole cloves, you can just add ¼ – ½ teaspoon of ground cloves to your glaze mixture.

Nutrition

Have You Tried This Recipe?Follow me on Pinterest @spaceshipslb

Proudly Prepared by the Spaceships Kitchen

This recipe was developed, tested, cooked and photographed by the Spaceships Kitchen. From our dinner table to yours, we hope you think it's out of this world!

Stephanie Keeping Publisher
Lexus Monroe Editorial Assistant
Angela Sessions Recipe Developer
Sian Cox Photographer
Amy Tandiko Graphic Designer
Ina Chong Social Media Manager

Ingredients You Will Need For This Honey Mustard Holiday Ham:

What Kind of Ham to Buy