Cured Honey-Dijon Glazed Oven-Baked Pork Shoulder Ham

Ham is often seen only as a grocery store deli counter staple, as something that belongs in a perfectly serviceable sandwich with some high-quality bread and high-quality cheese but confining it to such a supporting role does it a tremendous disservice. Ham, like so many other meats and whole poultry, deserves to be a centerpiece of a wonderful feast. Now, this is the recipe I promised would come out in time for a wonderful Easter dinner. But today is two Saturdays before Easter, and yet the recipe is already posted. This is, in fact, because if you want to make this recipe for a large number of people (and therefore you need a large ham), you need to start working with it today (or at the latest on Monday, if your ham is slightly smaller), and posting this any closer to Easter than now would make completing the recipe nearly, if not outright, impossible.

Technicality-obsessed purists will complain that this recipe isn’t for a “ham” because technically a “ham” refers to a different cut. Technically, “hams” come from pork legs. But after due deliberation and studying different recipes, I’ve concluded that a different cut, the Boston Butt part of the shoulder is superior to the traditional cut, and so this recipe will use it instead. Those of you who like American barbecue are probably familiar with the Boston Butt as a typical choice to be smoked and then turned into pulled pork.

Cooking a Boston Butt and turning it into a worthy ham centerpiece for a feast as extravagant as an Easter dinner (sides will be coming out the day before, in other words, in a week) is an extensive process. Each person you are going to feed will need anywhere from 16 to 20 ounces of pork by weight (1-1 ¼ pounds—because so much of this is bone). This ham will need to be dry brined for 16 hours per pound. So, as an example: a Boston butt being served to 6 people should probably weigh 6-7.5 pounds and will need anywhere from 4-5 days to cure. This will give each person one generous serving on the day of, and it will also provide plenty for everyone who wants leftovers.

For every pound of pork, combine the following into a bowl: 1 ounce of salt, 1 tablespoon of fresh ground black pepper, 2 teaspoons of paprika, ½ tablespoon of garlic powder, ½ tablespoon of onion powder, 1/8 teaspoon of fresh ground nutmeg, 1 teaspoon each of dried oregano, parsley, basil, and thyme. Combine this dry spice mix to ensure homogeneity, and then apply this liberally to the surface of the pork. Set the pork, uncovered, onto a sheet tray so air can circulate around it and leave it in the refrigerator undisturbed for the requisite amount of time. Take care to ensure that there are no cooked meats (or other raw meats), or anything else that could cross-contaminate against the pork shoulder, on the same level of shelves in the refrigerator.

This part of the process, which I first taught in the Super Bowl wings recipe, is an essential chemical process by which a properly seasoned, tender, and juicy final product is ensured. Dry brining works thanks to osmosis. The salt in the dry brine will pull moisture from inside the cells of the pork shoulder because the cells want to equalize the salinity inside and outside their boundaries. Then, given enough time, the salt will dissolve into this moisture and, together with the other seasonings, will be absorbed into the flesh of the shoulder, tenderizing it and rendering it perfectly seasoned. Remove everything else from inside your sink, and run the pork shoulder under cold water, then thoroughly pat it dry with a paper towel. This removes excess cure from the surface, but the chemical work of the osmosis reaction is done—so don’t worry, you aren’t taking away any seasonings. To ensure no cross-contamination occurred, wash your sink thoroughly after you complete this process.

Place your pork shoulder in the largest pan you have, together with 2 quartered onions, 3 sliced and peeled carrots, and 3 sliced ribs of celery. Fill the pot with water. Uncovered, bring the contents of the pot to a simmer, and hold the temperature there until the pork itself reaches an internal temperature of 135 degrees (medium-rare by beef standards, but still not done by pork standards). This will probably happen after about 2 hours, but this depends entirely on the size and shape of your pork shoulder and the intensity of the burner, so go by the temperature, not the time.

In the meantime, after about an hour and half, begin working on the glaze, and preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup of water, ½ cup Dijon or whole grain mustard, ⅓ cup raw honey, ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, and ¼ cup brown sugar. Bring this to a boil to dissolve everything and to thicken. Stir constantly, or things will burn, and you will need to start over. When this reaches and maintains a vigorous boil for 90 seconds, take it off the heat.

When the ham reaches 135 degrees Fahrenheit, take it out of the cooking vessel and reserve it somewhere else, discard the other solids, and strain out the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer. Return the ham to the pot. Find the fat cap. With a sharp knife, make several long diagonal cuts across the fat cap (just the fat cap—you’re not trying to slice the ham yet). Turn the shoulder 90 degrees and repeat, forming a grid. This will ensure the fat cap renders, making the pork shoulder perfectly moist even when fully cooked. This also has the effect of doubling or perhaps even tripling the surface area of the top of the ham, giving more space for the Maillard reaction to occur and enhance more flavor, since that increased surface area allows the glaze to coat a larger surface and the Maillard caramelization reaction will occur on the sugars in the glaze. When the shoulder returns to the pot now reading 135 degrees internally and scored, it should be placed fat-cap-up. Once the fat cap has been scored, spread the glaze all over the ham so that the whole surface is covered. Do this all at once, covering the surface in a single, thick layer of glaze.

Many recipes you will find online will tell you to use a slightly different method for glazing the ham, but I see a serious problem with this alternative method. The common way this seems to be done online is to build up the glaze on the surface of the ham over a series of 3 or 4 applications 10 minutes apart. Proponents of this glazing method will rightly point out that layering the glaze like that gives a shiny, lacquered finish that looks good. While that may be true, proponents of that method fail to consider two crucial point: First, that my method would make the ham look just as good, if not better. And second, and certainly more importantly, that my method doesn’t incur substantial heat loss/fluctuations from the nearly constant opening and closing of the oven door. The lacquering method, then, can’t be said to be any better than mine, on account of the fact that the fluctuations in the temperature cause a negative effect that cancels out or even perhaps outweighs the positive effects due to the layering of the glaze.

Bake the ham for 35 minutes undisturbed at 400 Fahrenheit, or until the glaze is set and the pork registers 165 Fahrenheit internally, and then allow it to rest at least 20 minutes before carving and serving it. For best presentation, take the pork shoulder to the table uncarved and carve it table-side. Serve sliced thick with side dishes, or sliced thin in a sandwich or other application.