How to smoke your own ham this Christmas

Christmas ham not quite cutting it? No worries. You can take your supermarket cut from mediocre to mouthwatering with a home-smoked finish on the BBQ or smoker.

Odds are, if you only eat smoked meat once a year, it’ll be at Christmas, when supermarket chillers are heaving with smoked hams.

While it’s possible to smoke your own whole ham from scratch - that is, from either cured or raw - it’s something best left to the professionals, because it takes a lot of precise know-how, time and experience. Giving an extra home-smoked finish to a regular pre-smoked ham, however, is something we can all do.

As the owner of gourmet caterers Crosdales BBQ, Appliances Online’s resident BBQ Expert, Russell Crosdale, has smoked more than a few Christmas hams in his time.

Here, Russell shares a Christmas ham glaze recipe that goes above and beyond the standard honey glaze, to turn your festive feast into a smoke-infused flavour bomb.

Do you need a smoker to smoke meat?

If you have access to a dedicated smoker, perfect, but you don’t need to have one of these to give your Christmas ham a delicious, smoky finish.

You can easily pick up an inexpensive smoker box for use on your regular gas BBQ, or charcoal grill, and some people choose to make their own homemade versions using aluminium foil trays. Essentially, the smoker is a metal box with holes in the lid, filled with wood chips from hardwood trees like hickory, oak, apple or cherry.

The woodchips need to be soaked for a few hours in water (and even other liquids like apple juice if you’re feeling experimental), and placed in the smoker box along with the soaking liquid. Then, place the box on the grill, above a medium flame, and close the lid of your BBQ. After about 10-15 minutes, once smoke starts coming out of the air vents in the smoker box, place the meat on the adjacent flat plate/griddle section of the BBQ. This section doesn’t have the burners switched on beneath it, so the meat will receive a more gentle, indirect heat reflected from the other side of the BBQ throughout the smoking process. Known as the 2-zone cooking method, this basically gives you more control over the temperature that you’re cooking at.

What about actual smokers?

You’re probably not going to invest in a dedicated backyard smoker for a once-yearly ham alone, but if your success at Christmas ignites a passion for smoking your own fish and meats from scratch, it could be the way to go. Be warned though: this could become your new obsession for 2023.

These days there are lots of options for smokers, from small portable units for around a hundred dollars, to serious ‘feed the masses’ models. The bar has been set pretty high for backyard smokers - and for those in the know, Traeger has become a byword for smoking meat. The Traeger range of pellet grill smokers runs from compact, portable models for under a thousand dollars, to event-sized units remotely controllable via app for a few thousand dollars. With space to cook a dozen chickens, lamb shoulders or racks of beef ribs, you can feed the entire street at your next neighbourhood barbie. Only problem is, once you’ve raised the bar with your smoked smorgasbord, none of your neighbours will be brave enough to host next year.

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How big is a Christmas ham?

Hams you buy in the supermarket or deli will be either full or half-leg. A full leg of ham weighs about 9kg and a half-leg weighs approximately 4kg. These will generally be double smoked hams, and sometimes triple-smoked. The more times they’ve been smoked, the more they generally cost.

OK, enough with the back story - here’s a holiday ham recipe for the most delectable glazed ham you’ve ever made.

Christmas Ham Recipe: Double Smoked Leg Ham w/ Orange Marmalade & Brown Sugar Glaze


Ingredients
  • 1 x smoked leg ham (skin on)
  • 250g orange marmalade
  • 250ml orange juice with pulp
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp BBQ rub (sweet based rub)
  • 1 tsp smoked salt
  • Cloves (optional)
Apparatus & Utensils
  • BBQ or smoker
  • Smoker box (optional)
  • Sharp knife to remove skin and score fat
  • Bowl and whisk
  • Pastry or BBQ brush
  • Wire rack
  • Oven dish
  • Meat thermometer to check internal temperature

Prep time: Approx 20 minutes

Cook time: Approx 3 hours for a full leg of ham, or 90 minutes for a half leg: until the internal temperature reaches 60°C

Method
  • Combine the orange marmalade, orange juice, brown sugar, BBQ rub and smoked salt in a large bowl, whisking until you achieve a smooth consistency.
  • Preheat your BBQ to a 2-zone cooking method on medium heat. If using a smoker, put the pre-soaked flavoured wood chips in at this point.
  • Cut the skin around the ham hock (narrow, bony end), leaving about 3-4cm at the end: this will be used to handle and move the ham.
  • Carefully cut the skin from hock to the wide end of the ham without piercing through the fat, and then put your fingers between the skin and the fat layer to carefully remove the skin from the ham (this can be discarded, or kept to make stock or soup with).
  • Score the fat layer in a diamond pattern, taking care to not pierce through to the meat layer. At this point, insert the cloves if desired.
  • Using a pastry brush or BBQ brush, glaze the ham with the orange marmalade mixture.
  • Place ham on a wire rack above a pan or oven dish that is filled halfway with water.
  • Place in your BBQ away from the heat source (on the ‘cold’ zone of your 2-zone cooking) and close the lid.
  • Maintain the medium heat and baste the meat with the glaze every 15-20 minutes.
  • Once the ham reaches an internal temperature of 60°C, remove from the BBQ. For a full leg, the total cook time will be around 3 hours.
  • If cloves were added, remove them and discard.
  • Glaze the ham one last time, let sit for 5 minutes and then slice to serve, along with Dijon mustard for those who like some heat to cut through their sweet, smoky and succulent meat.

Mouth watering yet?

If you’re buying a ham this Christmas, you’ll be grateful you went to the effort of giving it your own final glaze and smoke - and so will your guests.

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