The Guide to Heart Healthy Christmas Ham

For many people on special diets in the wake of heart disease and heart conditions, the challenge of eating during the holiday season can be filled with a sense of overwhelming temptation to stray away from the guidelines of their heart healthy diet. For heart patients, one of the biggest challenges of Christmas eating is in eating ham. Eating a heart healthy diet doesn't mean having to give up eating a few slices of your Christmas ham. The good news is that many people have been cooking their Christmas hams in a way that is heart healthy for years without even thinking about it by smoking their Christmas Hams. For people unfamiliar with the practice of smoking Christmas hams, here is the guide to smoking Christmas hams as part of a more heart healthy method for holiday cooking.

Smoking the Christmas ham, as well as any other cut of pork or meat, provides many advantages because a lot of the unhealthy fat and salt content of the ham are channeled away from the ham during the process of smoking.

To grill the ham, you should prepare the ham by lightly coating it with a little vegetable oil, vegetable oil spray, or olive oil. Include your favorite spices used in cooking ham, along with any special marinades you use when cooking ham. Save a small amount of the marinade and spices mixture for later in the cooking process. Place the ham in a grilling pan covered with aluminum foil.

Preheat your charcoal smoker or gas smoker to an ideal range of temperature for grilling. Once the smoker reaches ideal range, place the pan over the hot charcoal centered on the rack of your gas smoker or charcoal smoker. Every two to three hours during the smoking process, check the ham to be sure it retains its moisture content. The ham may or may not lose some of its moistness. If the ham is losing some moisture, spread a little of the marinade on top of the ham or use a meat injector to inject more moisture into the ham.

One of the advantages to cooking your Christmas ham on a smoker is that the method used slow cooking to ensure that the meat retains richness in flavor without sacrificing the cut of meat.