Spiral Sliced Ham

Summary

Buy a spiral sliced half ham labeled “ham with natural juices”.
Smoke at 225-250°F to an internal temperature of 120°F.
Use a mild fruit smoke wood, and go easy on the amount of wood used.

Spiral sliced hams are a popular choice not only during the holidays, but any time of year. These hams are convenient to serve because they’re pre-sliced and “ready to eat”, and their quality is usually quite good because most are a “ham with natural juices” product instead of the lesser quality “ham with water added” product.

Here are some pictures I took on June 4, 2006 when I prepared this ham.

No Preparation Required

These photos shows a Cook’s Spiral Sliced Honey Ham. It’s a shank end, ready-to-eat half ham with natural juices, weighing 9.55 pounds.

There’s absolutely no prep involved with a ham like this one, nor does it have to sit at room temperature before heating. Just remove the packaging and it’s ready to go into the WSM.

Place the ham face down on a foil-lined pan that will fit on the top cooking grate in the WSM. This prevents the slices from separating and even falling off the bone during heating.

To learn more about the various types of ham and ham terminology, visit the Ham Selection & Preparation page.

Fire The WSM

Fire-up the WSM using the Standard Method, using enough fuel to run the cooker at 225-250°F for 3-4 hours. About 1-1/2 Weber chimney starters of charcoal briquettes should be sufficient.

When the coals are well lit, assemble the cooker, add cold water to the water pan, and place a small amount of smoke wood on the fire. Remember, these hams already have smoke flavor added, so go extremely light on the smoke wood. Mild woods like cherry, apple, oak or combinations of these work nicely with ham.

I used two small chunks of dry apple wood, as shown above.

Heat The Ham

Place the ham on the top cooking grate.

Start with all bottom vents closed and the top vent wide open. When the cooker drops into the 225-250°F range, begin opening the bottom vents slightly to maintain this temperature. Leave the top vent wide open during the entire cooking process.

Heat the ham at 225-250°F to an internal temperature of 120°F. There’s no cooking involved here…remember, a ready-to-eat ham is already fully cooked, so you’re just heating the ham to serving temperature. This may seem like a low finished temperature, but anything much higher risks drying out the edges of the ham slices.

There’s no need to turn the ham during heating, but you can baste it occasionally, if you like. Just for fun, I basted this ham at the start and again every hour with a 2:1 mixture of Martinelli’s Premium Apple Juice and Maker’s Mark Whisky.

Here’s how the cooker and meat temperatures went for this ham.

Time	Lid Temp	Meat Temp	Vent 1 %	Vent 2 %	Vent 3 %
3:08 pm (b)	–	–	0	0	0
3:40 pm	280	41	0	0	0
4:00 pm	240	41	0	0	0
4:15 pm	215	44	50	0	0
4:30 pm	218	48	50	50	0
4:45 pm	225	57	50	50	50
5:00 pm	225	64	50	50	50
5:15 pm	225	71	50	50	50
5:30 pm (b)	225	78	100	100	50
5:45 pm	215	87	100	100	100
6:00 pm	213	95	100	100	100
6:15 pm	211	100	100	100	100
6:30 pm (b)	205	104	100	100	100
6:45 pm	200	113	100	100	100
7:00 pm	205	118	100	100	100
7:23 pm	200	120	100	100	100

(b) basted ham

Note that the vent percentages represent the way I set the vents at the time indicated.

Serve The Ham

When the ham reaches an internal temperature of 120°F, it’s ready to serve. Tips for carving a spiral sliced ham can be found on the Ham Selection & Preparation page.

These photos show the finished ham and how I served it with barbecue seasoned potatoes, cut corn, and apple sauce.

Spiral-sliced ham with potatoes, corn, and apple sauce

Make It Sweet, Turn Up The Heat

Looking for a sweet and spicy ham? In the book Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time Barbecue Road Trip!, Ray Lampe has a recipe for Smoked Ham Kansas City Style (p. 22) that follows a similar process to the one described above, but rubs the ham with a mixture of 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, then heats it to 160°F internal temperature using oak as the smoke wood.