Thanksgiving Ham

I like turkey, but I like ham better. So this year, I took matters into my own hands and made sure we had ham to go along with our turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. For about a year, I have been wanting to try a ham recipe with a secret ingredient: Dr. Pepper. That's right. I found a recipe for a spiral ham with a Dr. Pepper glaze (I'll provide the recipe at the end of this post, for all those eager to try it). So for Thanksgiving diner this year, I was in charge of preparing the ham, and I made it with the Dr. Pepper glaze. I thought it was quite good and would be interested in anyone else's honest opinion on it. It was really sweet, but I didn't think there was enough of it. You could really taste the glaze on the pieces of ham that were near the bottom of the pan that got soaked in the glaze while it cooked, but the rest of the ham tasted like normal ham. If I had to do it again, I would have doubled the glaze recipe and had half of it available (warmed) just to spoon onto your ham when you dish it onto your plate. Anyway, here's the recipe (thanks to the good people at Cooks Illustrated):

1/2 cup Dr. Pepper
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 Tbs. fresh orange juice
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 spiral-sliced, bone-in ham (7-10 lbs.)

1. Bring Dr. Pepper, sugar, orange juice, and mustard to boil in medium sacepan. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until mixture is syrupy and measures 3/4 cup, about 8 minutes.
2. Remove ham from packaging and discard plastic disk that covers bone. Place ham in plastic oven bag, tie bag shut, and trim excess plastic. Set ham cut side down in 13 by 9-inch baking dish and cut 4 slits in top of bag. (If you don't have an oven bag, place ham cut side down in baking dish and wrap tightly with foil). Let stand at room temp. for 1 1/2 hrs.
3. Adjust oven rack to lowest possible position and heat oven to 250 degrees. Bake ham until center registeres about 100 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours, depending on weight of ham.
4. Remove ham from oven and roll back sides of bag to expose ham. Brush ham liberally wit glaze and return to oven briefly until glaze becomes sticky, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, brush entire ham again with glaze, loosely cover with foil, and let rest for 30 to 40 minutes before carving.