Slow Cooker Honey Glazed Ham
My method for slow cooker honey glazed ham results in a tender, juicy, über-flavorful ham with just a few minutes of hands-on time. This rich and thick homemade honey ham glaze adds tons of moisture and flavor!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Slow Cooker Honey Glazed Ham
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 10 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 4 hours in the slow cooker
- 🍖 Flavor Profile: Juicy ham with a caramelized, sticky savory-sweet glaze.
- 🍽️ Good For: Thanksgiving when you don't want dry brined turkey, Christmas dinner main course, Easter spreads, or even weeknight dinners.
- 🧡 Difficulty: Easy enough for a weeknight, fancy enough for a holiday.
"This is beyond delicious! So easy and moist and a big bonus for me: frees up the oven to cook other things (like the cheesy potatoes that MUST be served alongside). So very glad I found this recipe!"
- ANN -
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya, friend: Ready for the easiest ham ever? The slow cooker makes for the simplest juicy ham!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- It makes the juiciest ham. By cooking the ham slowly at a low temp, and by keeping it covered, the ham retains all its moisture. That means you get the juiciest ham possible!
- The honey-mustard glaze is so dreamy. You could just cook the ham in the slow cooker in the honey mustard mixture, serve it, and call it there. But I like to go the extra step and simmer down the cooking liquid, glaze the ham, and then put it in the oven for a quick trip under the broiler. It gives it that glossy, glazed, sticky, delicious coating that is pretty much the thing dreams are made of.
- Time for sides: The beauty of making your main dish in the slow cooker is that you'll have plenty of time to make the sides (or just take a break and put your feet up)! Try it with some Instant Pot mashed potatoes, easy yeast rolls, Instant Pot applesauce with skins or my freezer applesauce, or butternut squash basmati rice. To get some colorful produce on your plate, try a pomegranate persimmon salad, glazed beets, or cranberry applesauce.
- It's simple to put together. We tend to reserve cooking juicy, tender ham for holidays, and while I love a good Easter or Christmas ham, I'm here to tell you that by using the slow cooker, making a ham is easy enough for even the busiest of weekdays!
🍖 The Ingredients You Need
- Ham: I usually opt for a bone-in ham because I prefer the flavor and moisture you get. They are larger and slightly harder to carve, but they hold moisture better, and as a bonus, you get a great ham bone that is perfect for Ham and Beans! Having a pre-sliced ham (also sold as a spiral-cut ham) will save you a lot of headaches when it comes time to carve, and it also has the added benefit of allowing you to get all the flavorful glaze in between all the slices.
- Mustard: Go with Dijon or spicy brown mustard to counter the sweetness of the honey and brown sugar.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Boneless Ham: I've made this recipe with both boneless and bone-in hams, and I do prefer the flavor and moisture you get from a bone-in ham, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a boneless. Boneless hams are easier to work with (no bone to cut around) and smaller (making them easier to fit in a slow cooker), but they also tend to dry out more easily. A pre-sliced ham is less important if you are getting a boneless ham, as those are much easier to carve than a bone-in ham.
- Use Honey Mustard: If you aren't a big mustard fan, I promise this ham doesn't come out with a strong mustard flavor! But if you want to cut it down even more, you can use honey mustard instead of the stronger Dijon or spicy brown mustard. You may want to reduce the amount of honey a touch to account for the sweeter mustard-give the sauce a taste before you pour it into the slow cooker to see what you think!
🥣 Slow Cooker Honey Glazed Ham How-To
Step 1: Put the ham in the slow cooker, and then heat all the glaze ingredients together on the stove top. Heat and whisk just until all the sugar is dissolved. Pour the honey-mustard glaze over the ham-you may need to separate the slices a bit to get the glaze between them.
Cover and cook for 3-4 hours on Low or 2-3 hours on High. Because the ham is pre-cooked, you just need to cook it long enough to warm it through.
Step 2: Move the ham to an oven-safe dish to get it out of the way. Then pour the liquid from the slow cooker into a small saucepan and cook for 5-7 minutes. It should be thick and bubbly.
Step 3: Pour the glaze over the entire ham. Broil for 4-5 minutes, basting with the glaze every minute or so.
🙋🏻♀️ Slow Cooker Honey Glazed Ham FAQs
The secret to getting the honey-mustard glaze flavor in every bite of ham is to use the glaze twice! First, you'll cook the ham low and slow in the Crock Pot, bathed in the honey-mustard mixture like the ham's own personal spa treatment. Then when the ham is warmed through, you'll reduce the sauce into a glaze, brush it all over the cooked ham, and broil it in the oven for just a few minutes to bring out the yummy caramelized flavors.
You can absolutely warm up a fully-cooked ham in the oven, and have dinner on the table in a shorter amount of time. But not only does the slow cooker keep the whole process so beautifully hands-off, it also keeps the ham from drying out. In the slow cooker, the ham is kept covered, and is cooked slowly at a low temperature. All this comes together to help retain moisture, so you end up with a juicy, delicious ham.
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👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Opt for a bone-in spiral ham: While I've made this recipe with every kind of pre-cooked ham out there-boneless, bone-in, spiral-cut, unsliced-you'll get the best results with a bone-in, spiral ham. Leaving the bone in makes for a more flavorful, juicier ham, while a spiral-cut ham will save you a lot of effort at carving time!
- Make it fit: If you have a larger slow cooker (like my six quart one), you can fit a quarter ham with the lid on, and you can even fit a half ham if you make a fake lid with aluminum foil! The largest ham I was able to fit in my slow cooker was a 7-pound ham. If you end up going bigger, you might have to trim off some of the end to fit it well.
- Use leftovers wisely: You can certainly eat leftover ham cold, but if you want to heat it up, you have two options. For heating up just one or two servings, you can warm up individual pieces in a skillet over medium heat. To warm a larger batch of slices, place the ham in a baking pan, add ½ cup of water or cider, and cover with foil. Heat in a 350°F oven for 15 minutes. Warm or cold, you can use your leftover ham in sandwiches or salads, serve it for breakfast, or stir it into soups like my split pea soup with ham.
🍲 More Slow Cooker Recipes
If you tried this slow cooker honey-glazed ham or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Slow Cooker Honey Glazed Ham
Ingredients
- 1 spiral-sliced ham fully cooked (between 4-7 pounds)
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup honey
- 2 tablespoons Dijon or spicy brown mustard
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- ¼ cup water
Instructions
- Place the 1 spiral-sliced ham in the basin of a slow cooker.
- In a small saucepan, combine the ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup honey, 2 tablespoons Dijon or spicy brown mustard, ¼ teaspoon ground cloves, 2 cloves garlic, and ¼ cup water over high heat. Heat until just warm enough to dissolve the sugar. Pour the mixture over the ham, making sure to separate the slices to let the glaze get between.
- Cover the slow cooker tightly with the lid, or, if the ham is too large, make a tight cover with aluminum foil.
- Cook on low for 3-4 hours, or high for 2-3-just until warmed through.
- Preheat the broiler, transfer the ham to an oven-safe dish, and set aside. Pour the cooking liquid into a small saucepan. Heat cooking liquid on medium-high for 5-7 minutes, or until thick and bubbly. Brush onto ham, and broil for 4-5 minutes, removing to baste with additional glaze every minute or so.
Video
Notes
- I've made this recipe with both boneless and bone-in hams, and I do prefer the flavor and moisture you get from a bone-in ham, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a boneless. It's really up to you, whichever you prefer.
- The general recommendation for ham serving sizes is that you need about ½ pound of boneless ham per person, or ¾ pound bone-in ham per person. I have found that a boneless quarter ham (about three pounds), is plenty to serve my family of three for dinner, and still have plenty of yummy leftovers for next-day sandwiches.
- For a ham that is bordering on too large for the Crock Pot, go ahead and double the glaze. The foil lid doesn't need to be air-tight, you're just looking to keep the heat in. I just kinda wedge it along the edges and then twist it together at the top. Like making the slow cooker a tin foil hat.
I'm gonna need to use a larger ham next time, because this was such a hit! Reheating the leftovers in a little bit of unsweetened apple cider was an A+ move as well.
Will this work with a whole ham that is not spiral sliced?
Hi Connie! Here's what we say about that in the post: "Do I need to get a spiral ham? Having a pre-sliced ham (also sold as a spiral-cut ham) will save you a lot of headaches when it comes time to carve, and it also has the added benefit of allowing you to get all the flavorful glaze in between all the slices. A pre-sliced ham is less important if you are getting a boneless ham, as those are much easier to carve than a bone-in ham." As long as your ham is fully cooked (most grocery store hams are), then this recipe will work!
Is the ham thawed or frozen?
Thawed!
Great and simple recipe. Thank you !
This may be a silly question, but after you wrap the ham in foil, you put the lid on the crockpot, right? And if the lid doesn't fit, I can use foil to cover it, right? Planning on cooking this tomorrow!
Yes and yes! 🙂
This recipe looks amazing, just one question, is this recipe instructing to cook an already cooked ham for 8 hours? Surely 8 hours in a slow cooker wud be sufficient to cook a raw joint of ham?
I haven't tried it with a raw ham. I would guess that the time would be sufficient, but I can't guarantee that or how it would affect the flavor.
Looks delish im trying it right now but the way glaze tasted its gonna come out FABULOUS thank you
I have put ham in a crock pot for years and used tin foil to wrap it in because I put mustard (cover it with mustard and then I put brown sugar on the mustard and ham and then put pineapple slices all over it). Cook on low until done. Cooking time will vary depend on the size of the ham.
I've prepared ham in the crockpot many times and it always turned out moist, flavorful, and delicious. After reading several comments here stating that the ham turned out dry and brown I realized the one simple action that made the difference for my hams. I always wrapped the ham in heavy duty aluminum foil and then placed it in the crock pot. I cut 2 long strips of foil, laid them crosswise one strip over the other in a + formation, then laid the ham on top of the crossed foil strips. Next I brought the strips up around the sides of the ham, then added the glaze (the foil strips pulled up around the sides form a bowl type structure to hold any glaze that runs off), then pulled the foil strips on up and over the ham and folded the edges down to seal in the juices and moisture. . I never had a dried out, browned ham when I used this method. I plan to make a ham and follow this recipe except use the foil as described here. I hope this technique is helpful for those who ended up with a brown, burned ham.
Did it turn out using that method?
My ham turned mushy... very unappetizing... and disappointing...
Can i slow cook in an oven?
This glaze is amazing a big hit with my family ?
6-8 hours on low was way toooooo loooong. My ham was entirely dried out, bordering on burnt. Additionally, every Tim you remove the lid to baste your ham, the crock pot pot heats up again to counter the lost heat. I will not be making this again. Found a similar recipe where the cook time was exact,y half and there is no periodic basting. Sorry!
I made this tonight. I had a small ham, no bone. I loved it but it was too sweet for my hubby, but he still ate it. If you don't like sweet sauce for ham you won't like this. I think the cooking times are too long and would reduce them. I cooked my ham on low for about 3 1/2 hours and that was a little long. But the recipe calls for phone-in and that usually takes longer.
Should say bone in.