Anson's BBQ Adventures: Smoked Holiday Ham

Smoked ham and beans -- Is that a slice of bacon, too?

Ham is traditional for Easter, so I smoked a ham and baked beans today. For the ham I followed the procedure detailed on howtobbqright.com, with a minor tweak: I used a spiral cut ham to start with. Mainly because I'm lazy and wanted to make it easier to serve when the ham was done.

There are a couple of risks using a spiral cut rather than an uncut ham. The first is that it might fall apart during the smoking process. The second is that it might come out too dry when it's done. Fortunately neither of these happened today. You do have to be careful moving the ham on and off the smoker grate. The bottom slices will tend to peel off.

The basic ingredients

The first thing you do with the ham is throw away the glaze packet that come with it. You'll make your own soon enough. To prepare the ham, rub it with honey dijon mustard and lightly coat it with brown sugar. Then it goes in a 225° smoker for two hours. I used applewood chunks with some random mesquite and hickory thrown in. After two hours spritz it with pineapple juice, wrap it in foil, and continue to cook it for another hour.

After two hours in the smoker

After the third hour open the foil and put more brown sugar on the ham and spray with more pineapple juice. This will make the glaze. Cook for another hour. After a total of four hours cooking time take it out and let it rest for about thirty minutes.

For the beans I used the recipe for barbecues beans I found at BBQ Recipes Cookbook. Again, I made a couple of minor tweaks I'll explain in a moment. I started with drained Bush's Original Baked Beans as the base. Then I added Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce, paprika, and dry mustard.

Tweak #1: The recipe calls for honey but I substituted brown sugar today (I'm out of honey -- an oversite).

Tweak #2: It also calls for onion and green pepper. Instead of adding them raw I sauteed them in olive oil first to soften them up. I should have cooked the pepper a little longer since it was still a bit too crunchy when the beans were done.

Beans, done.

Finally I topped the mixture with bacon slices and it went in the smoker for about an hour and a half, uncovered. I wanted the beans to be ready when the ham was done resting, so I put them in the smoker after it had been cooking for three hours. And I added more wood to make them smoky.