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Paula Deen Cuts the Fat, 250 Favorite Recipes All Lightened Up, Exclusive: Holiday Baked Ham

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Invite a crowd over and get out your good china. Holiday ham is cause for celebration all on its own. And here’s a secret that you’ll be celebrating while your guests are digging in: While I used to glaze my ham with a full 3/4 cup sugar, I now use only 3 tablespoons, along with tasty sugar-free preserves, in this case apricot. I promise you, no one at the table will be the wiser. I like to serve baked ham with extra brown mustard on the side for slathering over the salty, juicy slices.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole cured ham (10 pounds)
  • 3/4 cup sugar-free apricot preserves
  • 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
  • 5 tablespoons brown or Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Cover a large roasting pan with aluminum foil and place a roasting rack in the pan.
  2. Score the fat of the ham in a diamond pattern (see Note). Place the ham on the roasting rack. Bake for 2 hours.
  3. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisk together the preserves, brown sugar, mustard, ginger, and pepper. Continue whisking until melted, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  4. Remove the ham from the oven and spread the glaze all over the ham. Return the ham to the oven and bake until the glaze is thick and slightly caramelized, about 30 minutes more.
  5. Transfer the ham to a cutting board and let it rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

 Serves 12

Note: To score the skin of your ham, remove the thick outer rind, leaving behind about a 1/2-inch-thick layer of fat. Using a very sharp knife, lightly slice into the fat to create a diamond pattern over the surface of the fat. The scoring will help to render the fat, making for a tasty, crispy outer layer.

More about Paula Deen Cuts the Fat, 250 Recipes All Lightened Up

Paula Deen has lost over 40 pounds and has maintained her weight loss for over two years by swapping out ingredients to reduce fat and calories. Paula’s key to weight loss is moderation and accountability, and one day a week she still enjoys good old southern cooking with biscuits and all. One does not have to give up taste when reducing calories, and these recipes are a testament to that. Paula shares 250 of her favorite recipes lightened up. This brand-new, New York Times best-selling cookbook presents lightened up versions of fifty of her classic southern recipes and presents new recipes that cut the calories but not the delicious taste.

The New-York Times Best-Selling cookbook, Paula Deen Cuts the Fat, 250 Favorite Recipes All Lightened Up, is now available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and your local bookstores!

Paula Deen - As a young girl growing up in Albany, Georgia, Paula Deen never dreamed she would become an American icon. As a young mother, Paula was living the American dream — married to her high school sweetheart and raising two adorable boys — when tragedy struck. Her parents died, her marriage failed and she began a prolonged battle with agoraphobia. With her boys in their teens and her family near homelessness, Paula took her last $200, reached deep inside her soul and started The Bag Lady, a home-based catering company that marked the start of Deen's professional cooking career. With sons Jamie and Bobby delivering lunch-and-love-in-a-bag, beginning in June 1989, Paula turned her life around by sharing what she knew best, traditional Southern cooking.

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