Christmas Dinner: Spiral-Sliced Ham Glazed with Cider-Vinegar Caramel, Green Bean Casserole, and Slow-Cooker Mashed Potatoes

Total Time: Approximately 4.5 hours

Sources: Meat Illustrated and the ATK website

Servings: A lot? We still have leftovers.

Sean doesn’t love ham. Neither does my sister. So having ham as a Christmas tradition is kind of whatever in their minds, but I actually really like it (as long as you’re not one of those people who serves it cold. I will microwave your cold ham. I’ve done it at Christmas dinner.). Sean had never cooked ham before, so we decided to give it a shot for our at-home Christmas. The sales were for spiral-sliced ham, which is pre-cooked, so it feels a bit like cheating, but he found a recipe that sounded interesting and we were all really happy with the result.

I was mostly excited about the opportunity to use the probe thermometer that I got Sean for his birthday. He’s had it for six months and he always forgets about it until the meat is almost done, but this time, it was in the recipe. I think it’s the second time we’ve used it? But really, what it taught us was that the ham cooked really quickly. Like, way quicker than it was supposed to. We let it go past the 110 degree goal that the recipe called for because my slow-cooker potatoes weren’t going to be ready in time, but the ham was still good. It wasn’t dry and the caramel was a super nice touch (that went well with the potatoes, too!).

I made a green bean casserole in the morning and took a small amount of it for us and delivered the rest to other family, which is why the picture includes a dish that I filled halfway with foil so that the casserole we did save wouldn’t be super thin when I put it into the oven to brown it. It’s a go-to holiday dish for me to make, which started as making the recipe off of the can after my mother-in-law purchased and dropped off all of the ingredients so that her oven wasn’t taken up by the casserole and morphed into me making it from scratch because I’m like that now. The mashed potatoes are the same ones we made for Thanksgiving and they are delicious and super easy, especially if you use a mandoline to slice the potatoes and enlist your sister and husband to peel the potatoes. They also prepped the green beans for me because they’re awesome.