Ah honey baked ham, its golden glaze covering a spiral cut ham adds perfection to any plate.
This brown sugar glaze for ham starts with honey brushed onto the surface of the ham, and includes seasonal spices and real butter!
This recipe is wonderfully easy to create and has the added benefit of saving you money too! Since the “real things” cost quite a lot, especially when you look at the simple ingredients!
Brown Sugar Honey Ham Glaze
For as long as I can remember my dad always bought one of those fancy honey glazed hams from the specialty store for every holiday. It was a nice treat and everyone really enjoyed it!
But eventually he realized that he was paying way more than he had to for ingredients he didn't really want to be serving to his family and guests. So he created his own honey ham recipe! And let me tell you, it knocks the socks off the specialty store version!
Using a Store Bought Ham
Usually grocery stores have holiday foods on sale during any holiday. We use these sales to grab things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkeys, and more... this includes hams! It's a great way to stock up on items we like to eat all year, but at rock bottom pricing.
With a freezer and some canning know-how, those holiday sales turn into huge budget savers!
Depending on where you shop, they may even have their own version of the honey glazed ham. Find one of those cheap, on sale, store-brand hams and just toss out the glaze packet that comes with it.
Or, if you want to make this when spiral hams aren't readily available in the store, you can buy a fully cooked ham shank and spiral cut it yourself by using a very sharp knife to cut the ham into very thin slices around the bone.
Making the Honey Ham Glaze
This glaze is crazy easy to make and doesn't require heating before the application!
Just brush honey all over the outside of the ham (once it's cut, if you're doing that yourself), then roll it around in all the spices.
Then you can caramelize the glaze in the oven on 500° until it's all golden and crispy. At that point you can either serve warm, or chill and serve cold!
Get the full details of this delicious homemade honey baked ham recipe below, and check out my From Scratch Holiday Cookbook for even more classic dishes made with real ingredients!

Brown Sugar Honey Ham Glaze
Ingredients
- Spiral cut ham or bone in, fully cooked ham shank half*
- 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 4 Cups brown sugar
- Honey
Instructions
- Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl, the pour the contents onto a wax paper lined surface.
- Brush honey onto the outer layers of the ham to help the spices stick, then roll the ham through the spices, coating the surface well.
- Do not coat flat end, only the outer layers.
- If you are heating it to caramelize the sugar (recommended), rub the mix inside the slices of meat as well. Otherwise, only coat the outer layers.
- Serve cold, or place ham on baking tray and broil at 500° until sugar caramelizes.
- Watch it closely to make sure it doesn’t burn.
- Remove from the oven and serve warm, or cool and serve chilled.
Norma says
I would like a video of how to spiral slice that ham, please. :)
Thank you!