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Roasted Garlic Honey Baked Ham

Whether you’re celebrating a holiday or just gathering the family, our honey baked ham recipe with an herby honey glaze is sure to please.

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a homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham on a serving platter surrounded by bay leaves and fresh orange slices
Photography by Gayle McLeod

A Homemade Honey Baked Ham That’s Even Better Than the OG!

A great big holiday ham in the middle of your table always feels like a real celebration. Covered in a delightfully sticky glaze, it’s familiar and comforting and generous and—best of all—makes for fantastic leftovers. We love a turkey sandwich, but that day-after-Easter leftover ham sandwich—with extra mustard, please—is possibly even better. Plus! With our homemade (yes, copycat!) honey baked ham recipe you can recreate the brand-name honey baked ham that you love so much for a lot less money and without much more effort. You really can! Holiday ham isn’t hard or time consuming, and it doesn’t have to be break-the-bank expensive. With a homemade honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze, this ham recipe is sure to be your new go-to family holiday gathering superstar.

a ham, Roasted garlic, honey, orange juice, dijon, fresh thyme, cinnamon and salt in bowls on the counter

Homemade Honey Baked Ham Glaze Ingredients

We love that crispy, slightly sugar-crunchy Honey Baked Ham glaze as much as anyone, and it definitely inspired our holiday ham glaze. But we also added a little excitement to the mix! Nothing too crazy, but a little dose of fresh herbs makes everything nicer and who could say no to roasted garlic! It ups the sweetness a bit—roasted garlic takes on a lovely rich, caramelized flavor—but it’s also deeply savory. You can roast your own, but for the sake of ease we usually prefer to just grab it from the grocery store olive bar.

  • Roasted garlic

  • Honey

  • Orange juice

  • Dijon mustard

  • Fresh thyme leaves

  • Cinnamon

  • Sea salt

water, roasted garlic, honey, orange juice, mustard, thyme, cinnamon, and salt in a small sauce pan to make a glaze for ham
water, roasted garlic, honey, orange juice, mustard, thyme, cinnamon, and salt in a small sauce pan to make a glaze for ham
homemade honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze in a small sauce pan for roasted garlic honey baked ham
homemade honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze in a small sauce pan with a spoon for roasted garlic honey baked ham

Even the Best Honey Baked Ham Recipe Is Only As Good as the Ham Itself

We have a theory that half the reason people love Honey Baked Ham so much is that buying one already cooked and glazed isn’t just easier—which it is—but it takes all the guesswork out of making a ham. You don’t have to wade through the—admittedly a little confusing—process of shopping for a ham. There are a lot of different terms and phrases that get tossed around, and it can be a little confusing if it’s your first time making a ham. For our garlic-and-honey baked ham recipe, the easiest thing to look for is a bone-in, smoked, spiral cut ham and yes, it will already be fully cooked when you buy it. If you don’t want to do a pre-cut ham, you can get a whole ham from the butcher! Just ask them to remove the rind and score the fat for you, so that you don’t have to mess around with that at home. Just so that you really feel confident when you head to the store, here are some of the words you might see on various ham labels and what they mean:

  • Spiral cut. This just means that the ham has been pre-sliced in a spiral—just like a Honey Baked Ham would be! No carving necessary.

  • Boneless / bone-in. You’ll see that we’re calling for bone-in ham here. We like the flavor of a bone-in ham better, and we also like to use the bone once all the meat is gone to make split pea soup! If for some reason you prefer boneless, though, that’s fine to use instead.

  • Cured and smoked. Most hams that you see at the store are cured and / or smoked. You’ll likely see one or both of these labels on the packaging somewhere.

  • Ready-to-eat. Likewise, most hams that you see at the store are cured, smoked and already fully cooked—in other words, ready to eat.

  • USDA Inspected. This is usually on the label as a stamp or symbol, though if you look closely you’ll be able to read the word “inspected”. You want to check for this stamp! It’s a good one to have—it ensures that the ham was processed in a place that someone from the USDA inspected.

  • Water added. This means that water has been added to the ham and it’s generally a label that we walk away from. Ham with water added is usually a bit cheaper, but it’ll also be less flavorful.

a ham in a roasting pan next to a bowl of homemade honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze with a pastry brush
a baked homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham in a roasting pan  with a honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze

How Do You Make Honey Baked Ham?

It’s so easy to cook a honey baked ham at home. Honestly, the shopping is the hardest part, and even that isn’t too hard once you know what you’re looking for. Once you’ve got your recipe picked out and a ham in your hands, it’s time to get cooking! Here’s how to make the best (copycat) honey baked ham ever in just 3 simple steps:

  1. Make the roasted garlic-and-honey glaze.

  2. Honey-bake that ham! Glaze the ham and bake it for about 2 hours, glazing it again after about an hour.

  3. When the glaze is crisp and the ham is warmed through—145°F on an instant-read thermometer—it’s done!

a baked homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham in a roasting pan  with a honey-sweetened, herb-and-orange glaze
a homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham on a serving platter surrounded by bay leaves and fresh orange slices

How Much Ham Do I Need?

This is a great question, and always comes up around the holidays or, as we call them, ham season. The general rule is about 1/2 pound of ham per person, but we like to be generous at the holidays and we like to have leftovers—for ourselves and to send home with friends and relatives—so we usually go big! This recipe calls for an 8-10 pound ham, and so you can safely plan that it’ll serve 12 people with enough for seconds, thirds and leftovers.

a homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham on a serving platter surrounded by bay leaves and fresh orange slices

Tools You’ll Need

Side Dishes Worthy of a Ham-Tastic Holiday Feast

a homemade roasted garlic honey baked ham on a serving platter surrounded by bay leaves and fresh orange slices

Ham It Up!

If you can’t ham it up at the holidays, when can you?! Go big with this gorgeous honey baked ham copycat recipe, and we promise everyone will be raving for years to come. We want to hear all about how your holiday feast turns out! Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!

Roasted Garlic Honey Baked Ham

  • Serves: 12
  • Prep Time:  20 min
  • Cook Time:  3 hrs
  • Calories: 706

Ingredients

  • 1 (8 to 10 pound) bone-in smoked ham
  • ¼ cup roasted garlic, drained and roughly chopped
  • ¼ cup honey
  • ¼ cup fresh orange juice (from 1 orange)
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the center position.

  2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine ½ cup water, roasted garlic, honey, orange juice, mustard, thyme, cinnamon, and salt. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes until the glaze is thickened.

  3. Place the ham in a large roasting pan. Brush the ham with about a third of the glaze and cook, uncovered, for 50 minutes. Brush the ham with about half of the remaining glaze and continue cooking for another 50 minutes. Brush the ham with the remaining glaze and continue cooking until it has cooked for a total of 15 minutes per pound, 10 to 40 minutes more. An instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the ham willread 140°F when the ham is fully warmed through. If the ham is beginning to burn before it’s finished cooking, cover it with foil.

  4. Allow the ham to rest for 15 minutes. Serve warm.

NOTE: You can use a spiral cut ham—meaning the ham is fully cooked and sliced and ready to go. Or, if you buy a whole smoked ham from the butcher—which is still fully cooked, but not yet sliced—simply ask them to remove the rind and score the fatty layer for you.

Nutrition Info

  • Per Serving
  • Amount
  • Calories706
  • Protein72 g
  • Carbohydrates22 g
  • Total Fat42 g
  • Dietary Fiber0 g
  • Cholesterol0 mg
  • sodium223 mg
  • Total Sugars9 g

Roasted Garlic Honey Baked Ham

Questions & Reviews

Join the discussion below.

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  • Colleen Flanigan

    What’s the easiest way to roast the garlic. I can’t find it at the local supermarket.

    You can cut a head of garlic in half. Loosely wrap it in foil then bake it in the oven on 400 Farenheit for 25-30 minutes. We hope you enjoy the ham!

  • Chris David

    Really delicious recipe. I love it yummy!!! It's really awesome

    Thanks Chris, glad you enjoyed it!

  • Jenn

    Absolutely delicious and so much simpler than I thought!

    Thanks Jenn!