Hmmm, why not try a glaze more on the sweet side?  I'm thinkin brown sugar, ground cloves, all spice with vinegar (red wine or apple) to balance the sweetness of the brown sugar. 

I'm interested in everyone's opinion of this since I'm still working on flavor development. 

For thanksgiving and private parties this year we served Virginia Ham with a "Hoisin-Orange Glaze." Not only did people rave, but it is by far the easiest ham preparation and glaze that I've ever made.

You'll want to start with a high quality smoked ham without any other flavors like honey, spices, etc. Place in a roasting pan, cover the bottom of the pan with orange juice (about 1/4-1/2"), tent with foil and place in a 300-325F degree oven for about two hours.

Make a 2-1-1 mixture of hoisin, fresh squeezed orange juice and rice wine vinegar. Hoisin by itself is extremely sweet, so you'll want to add enough acid to bring that sweetness under control. Taste for balance and readjust as necessary (ie. if the glaze is too sweet, add more vinegar, if it becomes too sour, add a little pinch of sugar or even some honey). Add the zest of one orange and you're ready to rock.

After the initial two hours, remove foil from roasting pan and pour about a third of your hoisin glaze over the top of the ham, no basting brush necessary. Place ham back in the oven uncovered, raising the temperature to 325-350F. Repeat glazing process two more times at 20 minute intervals.

When ready to serve, remove ham from the roasting pan, setting aside to rest. Pour juices and glaze left behind into a separate sauce pan. Bring to a simmer, reduce slightly until the glaze coats the back of a spoon and serve along side the ham.

That's it!

Since this glaze is so simple I must advise you to fight the urge to doctor it up. A lot of the flavor structure comes from the ham itself and the orange juice at the bottom of the roasting pan that gets infused with the ham's smoky goodness. Yes you could easily add herbs, spices, garlic and shallots, but trust me, you won't need them.

People will beg you for your secret!

Wow that sounds much better than my idea.  lol

For years we've been doing hams with just a can of pepsi or seven up.  Prepare as per Jacob's instructions using just a can or two of your favorite non diet soda.

Two things that my mom bought for me before my trip to the States and which I brought back with me are Blueberry syrup (i.e. for pancakes) and macadamia nuts. Just the other day I started thinking that it could be interesting to crush some of the macadamias, mix them into the syrup and maybe add a few other ingredients (still deciding) as an experimental glaze for chicken (or maybe duck, if I decide to spring for one).

Labs that sounds like it could be really good! Are you planning on toasting the nuts or use them raw?

@ Limey,

Never tried a soda glaze; I'll have to give that one a shot.

KC,

Hadn't considered toasting them - have never thought of macadamias toasted. Sounds interesting. To conserve what I have and not lose it all on a single experiment (successful or not), I'm planning to use the glaze on just one breast or leg, so I COULD try it each way - raw AND toasted.

Labs, admitedly I've never toasted macadamias either, but I cant imagine it wouldnt work since toasted nuts are typically more flavorful than raw.  Let me know how your tests come out. 

Shall do.

Macadamia nuts are great for toasting because they contain a lot of natural oil. I'll usually rough chop before toasting, just to allow more surface area for browning. Recently we've done an Asian inspired salmon dish that contained toasted macadamia nuts.

Also for our tasting menu, our dessert intermezzo is Asian Pear Sorbet, Prickly Pear Sorbet with macadamia nut and pistachio microplaned over the top. The meatiness of both nuts work nicely with fruity sharpness of the sorbets.

PS: The best brittle I've ever had was Macadamia Nut Brittle!

I wanted to chime in since I made a similar post in another part of this forum and it didn't get any play. 

Last year, I did a bourbon maple glaze with some organic maple syrup, dark grade a, and some maker's mark bourbon. There was a whole bunch of other stuff that I threw in there, but i was totally just throwing in whatever. Ground mustard was in there, some clove or something...

It turned out great, but i wanted to see if i could get some suggestions on those themes. The only thing I'm really attached to is the bourbon-maple. Let me know what your thoughts/ratios are.

Also, @Limey and Jacob, my one uncle, who taught me a great ham glaze had soda in it. it was brown sugar, orange juice and ginger ale. Really really good.

The chicken turned out to be VERY tasty. All I did, for ONE chicken-breast half, was to combine 4 Tbsp. of blueberry pancake syrup, 2 Tbsp. roasted macadamias (finely chopped AFTER measuring), a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper and a pinch (a little bigger pinch, but not TOO much) of thyme into a saucepan, cook it until it is thick, bake the chicken at 350F for 35 minutes, apply the first layer of glaze, using half of the mixture, bake 5 minutes more, apply the remaining glaze and bake for 5 minutes more.

Simple, but good! I'd make it the same way, again, if I had more syrup and macadamias, but I want to get as much out of them as I can, so I'll probably try something else.

Dave, I'm not one of the trained pros, here, but I've found most glazes to be based upon some kind of sugar that will caramelise. Of course, some are NOT sugar, but are egg washes, reduced stocks or even wax (e.g. on the candies known as "buckeyes"), but look at the examples you gave: maple syrup, brown sugar and sodas. Also look at what I just used tonight: blueberry syrup meant for pancakes. I've also made a glaze out of a simple syrup (water and sugar) with puréed mangosteen and Scotch-bonnet peppers. Again, there's the sugar.

Those things work so well as glazes because, when you cook them down, first, they get nice and thick and sticky so they won't just run off of the food to which you will apply them. In addition, when the glazed foods are cooked, the glaze cooks even further, making it nice and caramelised, as mentioned earlier.

Other than that, you can pretty much add anything you like, as long as it's not something that will burn too easily during the final cooking. Even then, you could adjust the time at which you apply the glaze to avoid that. It's just a question of aiming for the taste YOU want and just going for it.

That said, one of my favourite ingredients to put into a glaze is tamarind. It has a wonderful flavour (which you WILL need to balance with something sweet) and it cooks very nicely in a glaze - especially on pork. Even just tamarind concentrate and honey would be enough to make a nice glaze for some ribs!

@Labs, your chicken experiment sounds great!  Glad it worked out for you.

@Jacob, I'm also going to be going with your Hoisin Orange Glaze.  It sounds awesome and I'm looking forward to tasting it. 

@Brian, I'm thinking about making a rice pilaf I do fairly often with mushrooms, hazel nuts, and sun dried tomatoes.  It's a hearty flavorful rice.  If your interested let me know and I'll post the recipie. 

@Brian,

The potatoes will work just fine. Even though hoisin is an Asian ingredient, that doesn't mean that your whole meal needs to be Asian inspired. Just think of hoisin as a dark, overly sweet BBQ sauce that needs to be thinned and balanced. Both scalloped potatoes and mashed potatoes will work nicely with your ham....and no one wants to be the guy who ruins Christmas because he decided against serving potatoes!

@kc,

I think you'll be happy with the glaze. The rice pilaf sounds great; do you think your guests will riot if you don't serve potatoes? ;-)

@Labs,

Interesting flavor combo on the chicken. We want pictures!

@StrickingTwice,

Sounds like your on the right track. Here are a couple of things to consider:

1. Both bourbon and maple syrup have flavor affinities for citrus, especially lemon. Although lemon would work as a good acid component to balance the sweetness, winter has lots of very interesting citrus fruits, my two favorites being blood orange and cara cara orange, although grapefruit would also work nicely.
2. I would use some sugar in the glaze as well, but it would be light brown sugar. Dark brown sugar has too much molasses in it and will over power the maple syrup.
3. A nice aromatic is needed and the first thing that comes to mind is ginger. Ginger goes great with orange, bourbon, maple and pork, so I think it would be a nice fit.

Here's how I would make a Bourbon-Maple glaze.

• Combine bourbon, light brown sugar and maple syrup in a 1:1:1 ratio in a heavy bottom sauce pot. This is just a starting ratio, but I think you'll be pretty close. If anything, you might need to tone back the light brown sugar. In this case, it is there as a secondary flavor and also to work as a thickener.
• Bring to a simmer and carefully taste (it will be very hot). At this point, the glaze will be overly sweet, but try to ignore this. Right now you're tasting to see if you like the balance of your two main ingredients, maple syrup and bourbon. If necessary, add more bourbon or maple syrup to achieve your preferred flavor balance.
• Once the glaze comes to a simmer, add in about one small finger of finely minced ginger, the zest of 1-2 oranges and freshly squeezed juice from said oranges. Now the oranges themselves won't offer enough acidity to bring the sweetness of the glaze under control, so I would go with either lemon juice or grapefruit juice (I'm leaning more towards grapefruit). Add just enough so that your glaze isn't overly sweet.
• Allow to gently simmer for about 10-15 minutes, reducing just enough so that the glaze slightly thickens.
• Pull glaze off the heat, let stand on stove top for about 10 minutes and whisk in a few pats of whole butter.
• Brush onto ham generously and make sure you leave a little bourbon for yourself!

That's a killer post. The stuff that I did was pretty similar in some ways, but I'm definitely going to try that. Are you making the glaze before cooking the ham? I though you would just pour the stuff into the roasting pan and everything would caramelize while cooking the ham. I mean, it's one of the cooked spiral hams, so it's really just warming i guess. Thanks for the detailed post, awesome stuff.

I'd like to second that Chef.  The Hoisin orange glaze was a hit on my end too.  Thanks for the tip! 

@BrianShaw and kc0kdh,

Awesome! Glad to hear the hoisin glaze worked out for you guys. Now you have another simple trick in you back pocket that you can pull out when you're stuck.

You know if your mother-in-law declared the feast a winner, you're doing something right!

I hope everyone had a delicious and merry Christmas.

@StrickingTwice,

Did you end up making the bourbon-maple glaze? If so, how'd it turn out?

Love hoisin and introduced it to my parents (and got them hooked on it), too!

@Jacob: Need new batteries for the camera. Have been putting it off since, even with new batteries, it's not working as well as it used to. I've had it for almost ten years, so it's a bit of a clunker, these days.

@KC

Would you post your recipe for the rice pilaf with hazelnuts, mushrooms and sundried tomatoes?  It sounds good.

Thanks

Hello Jacob.  I was thrilled to find this site.  Obviously I am new with you.  
Anyway, I would like to tell you that I have been preparing a very similar ham sauce for many years.  The one item, however that I add is Keens Hot Mustard either prepared or the powder.  Actually, I could try a touch of Thai hot chilli sauce too.  We find it just adds that little zip and touch of heat to the meal.  (we are a spicey bunch).  ..

Hi Carol. Welcome to the forum!

I think the addition of some sort of "kick" would work great here, especially with the sweetness of the hoisin and the saltiness of the ham. For a nice sting, a little sambal mixed into the glaze would probably do wonders. Great suggestion!