I bought our hams at Costco before Easter and planned on cooking them on the Big Green Egg, but life throws wrinkles in the best laid plans, to my delight. See, I was cooking for eight people and normally cook more than enough so the family has plenty of leftovers, I was going to smoke the three small hams on the Big Green Egg. While the hams that looked smallish at Costco, they turned out to be a bit larger than planned and while they would all fit on my seasoning (cake) pan, they would not all fit in the Big Green Egg. So we called an audible and cooked one of the hams in the new oven, as I was keen to taste the difference.
Big Green Egg
A quick word on our Big Green Egg cooking- Prior to leaving on our cruising trip, we had a size large Big Green Egg that I had gotten on sale but we had not used except on special occasions…ect. On our cruising sailboat, Tulum-5, I had a size small Big Green Egg strapped to one of the back rails that we cooked on at least every week or more often for four years. We hauled real charcoal with us everywhere and it was pretty easy to find in Central America, allowing us to cook outside even when the weather was sweltering. We even rigged a way to cook on the Egg under a rain tarp during the rainy season in Panama, which helped keep my sanity in check. Sadly, we were forced to leave the small Big Green Egg in Panama when we flew home to start our bus adventure. But upon returning to Southern California and getting our stuff out of storage, I made sure the size large Big Green Egg was in good shape and have loved re-learning to cook good food on it. We’re cooking lots of veggies and other foods on it, imparting that smoke taste and outdoor cooking into our family routine.
A Tale of Two Hams: Smoking and Baking Easter Hams
Not much of the cooking that I do is original and I reach out for hints, tips and help from various books or websites to get ideas and best practices. In this case, I am very thankful for the recipe and ideas from Bon Appeteach, which I used for this overall cook. I did use precooked ham, from Costco.
The basics of smoking and baking our hams went like this: defrost the hams, dry rub them with seasoning mix, soak the wood chips to use for smoking, plan for an indirect cook on the Big Green Egg, get the egg to temperature, get the ham into it’s nest and a drip pan under it, get the ham in the egg and monitor temperature.
Sounds easy, right. Yep, well sometimes things have their own plans. In this case, the hams would not all fit in the Big Green Egg and I had to call an audible to get one into the oven so I could close the lid on the Big Green Egg. Then the pan wouldn’t fit….I had forgotten to put the place-setter in for an indirect cook. So I took it apart quickly and got the place-setter into the egg, put the meat in and off we went. See the pics below:
After my temperature on the Egg stabilized and I had a moment to breathe, I put the remaining ham into the pre-heated oven and set it correctly, allowing it to cook away. After the ham on the Green Egg started to reach approx 125, I started to glaze it. I may have also taken the ham off the grill a tad too early, so that it wasn’t as tender as it would have been with like….another 20 minutes or so.
Between these hams and the ham in the oven, we had plenty of food…but I think I could have left these on the heat (on the Big Green Egg) just a tad longer, like another 20-30 minutes and it might have been just a tad more tender. Regardless, these turned out really good and we had a wonderful Easter with family.
A few of my other cooking stories on the Big Green Egg:
Bone-In Ham On the Big Green Egg- On A Cruising Sailboat
Big Green Egg On A Sailboat: Pork Tenderloin With Maple Whiskey Glaze
