This year for our Christmas ham I have settled on a campari glaze – Christmas is all about working booze into every recipe and this hits a lot of the classic ham glaze flavours.

To hear me talk on and on about the glaze and see some high def glaze porn check out the youtube vid here.

If Campari isn’t your thing don’t forget our apple bourbon glaze here.

Recipe:

• 1kg sugar
• 1 cup campari
• ½ cup orange juice
• 1 pinch salt and/or to taste 
• Optional: 1 tbsp potato starch
• Optional: 1 tbsp citric acid 
• Optional: tiny dash of red food colouring

The optional extras:

Potato starch helps thicken the glaze a little, bakers use it to glaze sweet buns etc.  It can take some work to ensure it’s mixed completely in.  Starting it off in quarter of a cup of hot water and mixing first can help. 

Citric acid helps the sugars from recrystallising over time.  Depending how far in advance you make the glaze this may or may not be an issue for you. 

Red food colouring is just if you’re vain like me and the glaze wasn’t red enough. Be very, very careful with this because a little makes it pop, too much makes it look like lipstick on a pig.

Method: 

Set your Weber kettle to low indirect heat, around 250-300f (130-150c), or whatever barbecue or oven etc you own – let’s be real though, Webers are the festive season barbecue of choice.

Allow 3-4 hours for the whole process.

• Remove skin from the ham, keeping for later.
• Lightly score the fat
• Apply a small amount of seasoning
• Smoke for 45-60 minutes until bark and colour develops
• Apply glaze every 15-45 minutes until you run out of glaze or patience
• After final glaze allow 30-45 minutes for sugars to caramelise
• Make sure internal temp 140f/60c or higher
• Rest for 15 minutes
• Serve

Glaze as often as you want but remember the cooking only happens when that lid is on so if you glaze too frequently it will never caramelise or cook through.

Hope you enjoyed!