Not Pork: This Smoked Meat Upgrades A Classic Holiday Ham With A Flavorful Twist

When the holiday season rolls around, the centerpiece on many tables is a glazed ham. But some households don't jive with the ham, and some industrious cooks have discovered you can easily replace a ham with a smoked turkey for equally mouth-watering results. While roasting a turkey is nothing new, applying the same sweet and sticky glaze to a smoked bird can give the holiday ham a run for its money. What a turkey lacks in pork fat, it makes up for in its ability to absorb and highlight the flavor of the glaze.

TikToker The Slider Guy takes one approach by using pre-smoked, cooked turkey legs, applying a sweet and fruity orange and pineapple juice glaze once the legs are re-heated and near fall-apart. If you're more of a do-it-from-scratch type, you can smoke the turkey yourself, whether that's just the breast, some drumsticks, or the whole bird.

If you're reheating pre-smoked turkey legs, you'll likely use more heat but less time. Somewhere between 325 and 425 degrees Fahrenheit for around 1½-2 hours should do it. The hotter the temperature, the later you should wait to glaze to avoid burning the sugars. If you're smoking the turkey yourself, you'll likely do so for longer at a lower temperature to cook through evenly, somewhere around 250-275 degrees Fahrenheit, basting a few times in the final 30 minutes.

Your glaze can be made with the same ingredients you'd use for a holiday ham. Typical components include fruit juice like orange, apple, or pineapple juice, honey, brown sugar, cider vinegar, or lemon juice. Of course, you can always spruce your glaze up with bourbon, pomegranate, fig preserve, chili, or balsamic. Combine these ingredients in a pot over a low-to-medium heat to dissolve, integrate, and thicken. 

In The Slider Guy's video, seasoned compound butter is first placed over the pre-smoked turkey legs to basically auto-baste under a tinfoil cover during the initial reheating. The result of this is meat so moist it falls right off the bone. Of course, what is a big hunk of glazed and smoked meat without suitably festive sides? Many of the best sides for this are the same great accompaniments you'd have with a glazed ham. To complement the sweetness of the glaze, you could go for honey glazed carrots or maple-roasted squash. 

Otherwise, lemon garlic green beans can add some acidity and freshness to balance the turkey's sweetness. Let's not forget that cranberries are still great with turkey, and their bitterness also offers a satisfying counter to the sweet glaze, so including a beet, cranberry, and apple salad on the table can tie in wonderfully.

To see how The Slider Guy produces fall-off-the-bone smoked and glazed turkey legs, check out this TikTok: