Brown Sugar Mountain Dew is a sweet ham glaze, made with brown sugar, MNT DEW soda and spices. Spread over a ham and baked, it will make the ham the star of your dinner table.
Update: This recipe was originally published in April 2012. The recipe and photographs have been improved and the recipe re-published in November 2020.
As a food blogger, sometimes you'll make a random recipe and tons of readers will love it. Other times, you'll make a classic recipe and readers will hate it. When I first shared this recipe, SEO was barely a thing. Food blogging was barely more than an online diary with recipes. Oh, how the world has changed...
So suffice to say, I expected nothing when creating and sharing this recipe initially. Boy was I wrong. It cracks me up how often this recipe is searched for. But, seeing that it is, it was in desperate need of an update and overhaul.
Homemade ham glaze with mountain dew
Why Mountain Dew, you may be wondering. Well, my husband is an avid Mountain Dew drinker and at the time the recipe was first shared, I was struggling to find recipes that his picky palate would like. Randomly purchasing a ham on sale, I had looked around my pantry trying to figure out what in the world to do with it.
Brown sugar was a typical glaze ingredient for ham, but I needed a liquid. Glancing around the pantry, my eyes landed on a two-liter bottle of MNT DEW soda and I knew I had to create a glaze using it.
The verdict for brown sugar mountain dew ham? He absolutely loved it. While the ham does not completely take on the flavor of the soda, it's sweet with a nice crunch from the brown sugar baked on top.
🥘 Ingredients for this recipe
- fully cooked ham
- Mnt Dew soda
- brown sugar
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- ground ginger
- paprika
- optional: pineapple rings and maraschino cherries
🔪Instructions for this recipe
- Preheat your oven to 350. Pour soda into the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Then make thin slices on the top of the ham for the glaze to soak into.
- Whisk up the glaze of soda, brown sugar and spices. Spread half the glaze over the ham.
- Optionally, attach pineapple rings and maraschino cherries to the ham with toothpicks.
- Bake for 1 hour, basting the ham with the juice on the bottom. When there's 20 minutes left, spread the remaining glaze over the ham and finish baking.
FAQ's for baking a ham
- Why do you add the glaze at the end? Splitting the glaze in half allows some of the mixture to seep into the ham and the other half (added at the end) allows the sugars to caramelize and create a sweet, crunchy shell on top.
- Do you need to wrap the ham in foil? No, this recipe has enough liquid to keep the ham from drying out.
- Can you reheat a glazed ham? Yes. Whip up an additional half batch of this glaze to add to them ham when reheating it in the oven. Bake at 325 for 20-25 minutes or until warmed through.
Serving Suggestions for glazed ham
what to make with leftover ham
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Recipe
Brown Sugar Mountain Dew Ham
Ingredients
- 3 lb. ham fully cooked
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup mountain dew soda
- 2 tablespoon mountain dew soda
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 4 slices pineapple fresh or canned, optional
- 4 maraschino cherries optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350. Pour the ¼ cup of Mountain Dew into the baking dish.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of Mountain Dew, garlic powder, onion powder, ground ginger and paprika together to form a thick paste.
- Place the ham in the prepared baking dish. Use a sharp knife to cut thin slices in the top of the ham. Spread half of the glaze on top of them ham.
- Optionally, affix pineapple rings with maraschino cherries to the ham using toothpicks.
- Bake the ham for 1 hour, basting with the juice from the bottom every 20 minutes.
- When 20 minutes remain, spread the remaining glaze on top of the ham and bake for the remainder of the time.
- Let ham cool for 10 minutes, then thinly slice.
Nutrition
Anonymous
My Grandmother made ham with mountain dew for years. I've been trying to find a recipe similar to what she did since her recipes were lost after she passed several years ago. Thanks for posting this, I think it will help us remember Grandma just a little bit better.