Sweet glaze and a smoky flavor combine to deliver a delicious bite that can feed any size crowd. This Traeger Smoked Ham Recipe is not just for special occasions or holiday meals; this simple ham recipe creates incredible flavor with little effort.
Holidays are the perfect time to gather with your entire family and friends for an unforgettable meal. Preparing a Traeger smoked ham can be a delicious way to make the holiday special.
This recipe is easy yet impressive, and it's just as simple as using your Traeger smoker. The extra smoky flavor adds a unique twist to the classic dish, making it an ideal centerpiece for your dinner table. It is the perfect holiday ham because it cooks outside, freeing your oven for all the side dishes.
Enjoy this easy main dish for Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other time of year!
Ingredients
Ham - This is obviously the main ingredient. A little further down in the blog post, we go into detail about choosing a ham to smoke. We chose a pre-cooked ham, specifically, a bone-in butt portion.
Brown Sugar - Adding a sweet, sticky glaze is the best way to balance the salty, savory flavor of ham. We use brown sugar for its deep sweet flavor.
Maple Syrup - Maple goes well with the brown sugar in the glaze.
How to Make Traeger Smoked Ham
Step One: Remove the ham from the packaging and rinse it off in cold water. Pat it dry with a paper towel.
Next, take a large sharp knife and make ¼ - ½ inch scores both ways over the entire outside of the ham. This will allow the smoke flavor to go deeper into the ham; secondly, it will allow the glaze to hold nicely on the outside of the ham when we begin to glaze it. If you bought a spiral ham from the grocery store, skip this step.
Step Two: Place the ham directly onto the grill grates in your preheated Traeger pellet grill smoker. If you don't have a Traeger Grill, go ahead and use whatever smoker you have. The goal is to produce a nice hot smoke that will add flavor and heat this ham through. Set your smoker to 250 degrees F. Insert a thermometer meat probe to monitor the internal temperature.
How long to smoke a ham on a pellet grill? A seven-pound ham like this will take about 3 - 4 hours to reach an internal temperature of 140°F.
Step Three: Once the internal temperature of ham reaches 120°F, you prep the glaze ingredients.
Step Four: Once the ham reaches 120 - 125°F, you can begin to glaze the ham. Use a pastry or silicone brush to cover the outside of the ham with glaze. Add more ham glaze every 10 minutes or so, as the ham continues to cook on the smoker.
As that ham reaches 140°F internal temperature, go ahead and pour any remaining glaze on the ham. You can transfer the ham to a roasting pan if you want.
Step Five: Once the Traeger ham is done, remove it from the smoker and place it on a cutting board. Tent with aluminum foil, let rest, slice, and serve.
How to Make an Easy Maple Brown Sugar Glaze
There are two ways you create this delicious glaze. Either in a small saucepan over medium heat or in a microwaveable measuring cup in your microwave. Add 2 tablespoons of brown sugar with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup to a glass measuring cup and microwave on high for 60 to 90 seconds. Stopping every 30 seconds to give it a stir. The sugar will dissolve into a beautiful thick syrup. This glaze adds a ton of incredible flavor to the ham.
Variations
Glaze - You can play around with the ingredients in the glaze. Swap the maple for honey, add citrus zest or add fresh herbs like finely chopped rosemary. Dijon mustard gives a nice tang.
Wood Chips - Varying the type of pellets you use will change the flavor of the bark of the ham.
Common Questions
What type of ham is best for smoking?
When it comes to ham there are several different options. Let's start with the cut. A whole ham can be up to 20 lbs. When it is cut in half, there is a butt portion and a shank portion. The pork butt portion is less fatty and tends to be tender. The shank portion has a classic ham look that we are used to seeing as the perfect holiday centerpiece. Next, you can have either a boneless ham or a bone-in ham. Cooking meat with the bone in adds more flavor. It can make it more of a challenge to slice, but with a little effort and some experience, it becomes very simple. You can also choose to go with a spiral cut ham to make carving and serving even easier.
Lastly, you can pick between cooked, ready-to-eat ham or raw fresh ham. Most hams that are available to purchase in supermarkets have already been cured and pre-cooked. All you need to do is heat them. Raw ham is typically going to be purchased from a local butcher shop or a specialty meat store. For this recipe, we are using a bone-in, shank portion, that has already been cured and smoked with hickory wood. We are going to heat it up on the smoker, adding a ton of additional flavor with a hickory and cherry wood smoke blend and a maple syrup brown sugar homemade glaze. Think of it as a double-smoked ham.
How big of a crowd does a ham feed?
A general rule of thumb is that 6 oz to a half pound of ham will serve one adult. If you are using a bone-in ham, tend towards the ½ lb per person. One of the great things about ham is that leftovers are easy to keep and they are very versatile in many other dishes. A 7 lb ham will feed about 14 to 15 people. That is plenty for my family of eight with leftover ham for Sunday brunch.
How to slice a Traeger Smoked bone-in Ham?
Place the ham on the cutting board with the bone sticking up away from the table. Then start by slicing the thinnest part of the ham. Slice straight down, slicing through it all the way. Once you get about halfway through, you will feel the knife starting to tough cartridge and bone. At that point, turn the ham and start slicing each of the other sides. As you go, the bones will start to reveal their location and you can take a smaller pairing knife to completely remove the rest of the meat from the bone. Enjoy!
Recipe
Traeger Smoked Ham
Equipment
- Traeger Grill or other smoker
Ingredients
- 7-8 lb ham butt portion
- 2 tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 tablespoon maple syrup
Instructions
- Remove ham from packaging and rinse ham under cold water. Pat the ham dry with a paper towel.
- Cut shallow scores in a grid along the entire outside of the ham. The cuts should be less than a half-inch deep.
- Place the ham in the smoker and smoke at 250°F for 3 to 4 hours or until the internal temperature reaches 140°F.
- Once the ham reaches 120°F, start to brush the ham with the glaze. You can reglaze every 10 minutes or so.
- The ham is done when the internal temperature reaches 140°F. Remove the ham from the smoker, slice, and serve.
Maple Syrup Glaze
- To make the glaze, combine the sugar and syrup in a microwaveable measuring cup. Microwave for about 90 seconds, stirring every 30 seconds until the sugar is all dissolved.
Nutrition
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Originally Published March 10, 2023. Revised and Republished October 8, 2025.
Jeff Beasley says
This recipe is so simple and a friend of mine that does not care for ham went back for seconds even though there were other protein choices!