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Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham

If you want to serve a ham for a special occasion such as Easter, Christmas, or the New Year, Aldi is a great place to find a good deal on your main course. The discount grocer has sold a variety of hams over the years, and we’ve written about several of them here, including a hardwood smoked butt portion bone-in ham, an applewood smoked uncured spiral ham, and a spiral sliced hickory smoked honey ham.

Aldi recently began stocking some different types of hams in advance of the Easter season, and I picked up a new one to try that is spiral sliced, boneless, and comes with a brown sugar glaze packet.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham cost $3.99 per pound at the time of publication. I purchased a 4.13-pound ham for $16.48.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham

This is a Seasonal Item, which means Aldi will stock it for a few weeks up to a couple of months, but it’s not something you’ll find at Aldi all year. I bought this ham in late February 2022 when Aldi began stocking hams prior to the Easter season, and it has a use-or-freeze-by date of May 15, 2022. Aldi also typically sells these hams in November and December for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

This ham is cured with water, dextrose, and 2% or less of salt, potassium lactate, corn syrup, brown sugar, sodium phosphates, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, and sodium nitrite.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham
Ingredients and nutrition information. (Click to enlarge.)

The glaze includes high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, water, modified corn starch, soybean oil, cellulose gum, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), spices, and calcium disodium EDTA.

One 3-ounce serving of this ham with glaze has 120 calories, 4 grams of total fat (5% DV), 1.5 grams of saturated fat (8% DV), 45 mg of cholesterol (15% DV), 830 mg of sodium (36% DV), 4 grams of total carbohydrates (1% DV), and 8 grams of added sugars (16% DV). If you eat the ham without the glaze, it only has 2 grams of added sugars (4% DV).

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham
Ham glaze heating instructions and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)

The ham is fully cooked, so all it requires is some simple heating if you want to eat it warm, although you can also eat it cold straight from the refrigerator. It comes with no heating instructions, but it does have instructions for applying the included brown sugar flavored ham glaze.

So I had to wing it to heat the ham. I wrapped it in foil so it wouldn’t dry out and placed it in a roasting pan with rack, and then heated it at 325 degrees for about 10 minutes per pound, with an estimated heating time of 40 to 50 minutes for my ham that was just over 4 pounds.

I ended up heating the ham for 50 minutes, and the center could have been a little warmer, but I had some other side dishes that were ready at that point, so I decided to go ahead and serve it knowing that it was already fully cooked.

To make it truly hot in the center, I probably could have left it in the oven for another 10-20 minutes, for a total of one hour or one hour and ten minutes. If I made this again, I might bump the oven temperature up from 325 degrees to 350 degrees to help speed the heating process more.

Another option if I were to serve this particular ham again would be to heat it in a slow cooker. It’s small enough that it should easily fit in a slow cooker with around a 7-quart capacity. I’m not sure exactly how much time it would need in a slow cooker, but I might allot 3-6 hours to heat it on low, adding the glaze toward the end of the heating time, and the slow cooker could be turned to the “keep warm” setting if necessary.

To use the glaze, the directions say to remove the ham from the oven and remove foil, then turn the ham on its side. (Be careful; the ham will be hot, and you might want to use utensils to move the ham.) Place the refrigerated glaze packet under warm water for 1 minute or until the glaze is softened. Cut off a corner of the packet and apply glaze evenly over the ham surface. Allow to sit 5-10 minutes while the glaze melts into the ham.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham
The ham with the outer wrapper removed and before heating.

The glaze is different from other ham glazes I’ve used because it’s ready to serve. Most other hams I’ve had include a powdered mix of spices in a packet, and I add water to the mix and heat it on the stove top. The glaze with this boneless spiral ham is more convenient because all I had to do was cut it open and drizzle it over the ham.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham
Hint: include a spoon in the serving dish so people can spoon extra glaze over their individual servings.

This glaze has a thinner consistency than other ham glazes I’ve had, and the flavor is different, more sweet, without the nuanced flavors of spices that I’m accustomed to with other ham glazes.

The spiral cut makes it easy to serve and eat. There’s a small portion of the ham toward the bottom center that is not cut all the way through, and that keeps the whole ham from falling apart entirely. The ham is tender enough that it was was easy to pull off servings with a fork, or if you want it to look tidier, you could use a knife to cleanly slice through that uncut portion.

There was also enough ham that this 4-ish-pounder served two adults and two children with plenty left over for sandwiches, tetrazzini, or whatever else you want to make with it.

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham
Glazed heated ham ready to serve.

This ham has more of a processed texture compared to traditional bone-in hams. It doesn’t have any fatty bits (which my kids appreciated), and the whole ham is a uniform texture. One blogger explains this, stating: “When producers remove the bone from a ham, they have to then reshape the meat (in a machine called a vacuum tumbler) so it won’t fall apart when sliced. This can give boneless ham a bit of a spongy texture.”

One other observation: when I served this ham, some parts had a noticeable rainbow sheen on them. There is nothing wrong with the ham, and it’s definitely not spoiled. If you see an iridescent sheen on your ham, it has to do with how light hits meat that’s been cut against the grain (deli meats are usually cut this way, including ham), leaving space between muscle tissues and causing an effect known as diffraction.

This boneless spiral sliced ham doesn’t have all of the complex flavor of a bone-in ham, and of course there is no bone to make soup or ham and beans with later. However, this ham is a good choice if convenience is high on your priority list. It takes less time to heat compared to a bone-in ham, it couldn’t be easier to slice, and the glaze is ready to serve. My family also didn’t care that it’s not quite the same as a bone-in ham, and they all heartily dug in.

The Verdict:

Appleton Farms Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham is fully cooked and can be heated in the oven or served cold. It comes with a brown sugar glaze that is ready to open and drizzle over the ham. The spiral slicing makes it easy to pull apart individual servings, and the ham has a uniform tender texture that makes it ideal for picky eaters or for making sandwiches. It doesn’t come with some of the perks of a bone-in ham (hello, ham bone bean soup), but it’s one of the more convenient hams we’ve seen Aldi sell.

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38 Comments

  1. I bought the bone-in spiral sliced and put it in my freezer. I have now cooked it and want to know if I can freeze the leftovers.

    1. You certainly can freeze leftovers. I portion them into Ziploc freezer bags and save them for casseroles, soup, sandwiches, etc.

  2. When do you glaze? Do you glaze and return to oven like old recipe?Used to say remove from oven during last 12 minutes or so, add glaze and return to oven.

    1. The glazing directions are different for this boneless ham. They say to simply add the glaze after it’s completely done heating and give it a few minutes to “melt” in. Aldi sells several different kinds of hams, and the directions may vary, so be sure to read the directions that came with yours.

        1. We bought the Appleton Farms spiral ham with the bone–and there ARE cooking instructions. However, ‘they’re on the opposite side of the product label on stuck to the package–and you have to be careful to peel it off or you’ll lose it. Anyway, it says to preheat the oven to 250F and heat it for 12 to 15 minutes per pound. It suggests adding the glaze 30 minutes before the end of the recommended (calculated?) cooking time. It doesn’t recommend a final temperature, but I’ve seen 135F and 140F elsewhere.

  3. Thanks so much. I have no idea why they would leave the directions off the packaging. I appreciate your help in this.

  4. I thought that $3.99 was a lot to pay for the quality of the ham. There were a number of zones of fat that I had to cut out and discard. Plus the spiral slicing wasn’t all the way through the ham which meant that I had to guess cutting it the rest of the way through.

  5. Do you have a due date that the hams will be in the Aldis stores before 11-19-2022 ?? as this is the day, we celebrate Thanksgiving with our families. I usually shop in Marshalltown, Iowa but I go to church in Waterloo / Cedar Falls area so could stop there if needed.

  6. Our Appleton Spiral Ham had an excessive amount of fat and was not cut through. A large percentage of nearly every slice was fatty. We are going to return it, hopefully with compensation.

  7. Just bought a spiral ham that is fully cooked and labeled “keep refrigerated”. Unfortunately I left it out overnight. Can I still cook it?

      1. I purchased the Appleton Spiral Cut Double Glazed Ham Bone In for Christmas. It has a sell date of February 1,2023. Is it safe to heat and serve at this time? It remained vacuumed packed in fridge for this time.

  8. Can this be served without the glaze? Which way is best… with or without the glaze? Is it just a matter of preference?

  9. I bought a Hickory Smoked Boneless Spiral Sliced Ham. How do I cook it. There are no directions

  10. At $3.99 per pound I expected much better. No instructions. While the ham tasted good it wasn’t any better than less expensive hams and it had a lot of fat in it which you can’t see because of the packaging. I have gotten Aldi Appleton spiral hams in the past for less money and have been pleased. Won’t be purchasing this one again.

  11. Had a “Never Any” boneless spiral cut ham for Easter. I added slices of fresh pineapple and heated it in the oven for about 1/2 hour. It looked beautiful but fell apart and was “mushy” in your mouth. It was not pleasant. It had the taste of ham that had been ground and pressed back together with some unknown gelital ingredient. Today, leftovers can be mashed with a fork, no actual
    firmness to it. There is no way of serving slices.

  12. Bought and served an Aldi Appleton Shank Portion Ham about 6 lbs for just 4 people. No glaze packet and not pre sliced (pre sliced dries out fast). Way to fatty…. half of it was inedible … We had enough for the dinner and just a little for take home doggie bags. The ham stayed very moist and had good flavor but I’ll choose another brand next go round.

  13. We bought a spiral smoked ham a couple years ago. It was delicious. We bought another this past Christmas 2023 and it was so tough and fatty. The flavor was not as good. We definitely won’t be buying another Appleton ham. So bad it turned us against ham!

  14. I bought a 4.16lb boneless ham from Aldi and I ended up baking it at 325° in the oven and added 1/4 water to the shallow baking pan. I baked covered with foil for an 1.5 hrs. It was perfect. Happy Easter. 🌷

  15. I bought this ham for Thanksgiving. TERRIBLE! The spiral went in only about 2 inches. My husband had to cut each piece by the time it was cut it was cold. Meat was tough and had no flavor. Worst ham I have ever served. Not buying this again!

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