Ham cook time calculator
Almost every ham sold is already cooked, so what people call smoking a ham is really reheating one, and it has a different safe temperature from a raw one. Pick which you actually have, enter the weight, and get the time, the USDA target, and the hour to start.
Local conditions
Off by default. Turning it on asks your browser where you are, or you can type a town instead. Nothing is requested until you do. Altitude then adjusts the cook time using the USDA figure; weather is described but never changes a number.
These are estimates. Cook to internal temperature, not to the clock — two cuts of identical weight can finish hours apart. USDA FSIS: reheat a fully cooked ham from a USDA-inspected plant to 140F. Reheat any other cooked ham, including one from a local butcher or an unlabelled package, to 165F.
Cooking something else? The full smoking calculator covers every cut, including chicken, turkey, chuck roast, pork loin, beef short ribs and salmon.
How it works
A fully cooked ham runs about 15 to 20 minutes per pound at 225F, because you are only bringing it up to serving temperature and taking on smoke while you do it. This is the double smoked ham that turns up at every holiday table, and it is the fastest large cut on the site.
A fresh ham, meaning a raw pork leg, is a completely different cook at roughly 30 to 40 minutes per pound. If you bought something pink, sliceable and labeled cooked, you do not have one of these.
The safe temperature differs by which you have, and USDA FSIS is specific about it. A fully cooked ham packaged in a USDA-inspected plant is reheated to 140F. Any other cooked ham, including one from a local butcher or out of an unlabelled package, goes to 165F. A fresh uncooked ham is 145F with a three-minute rest.
Neither stalls. A cooked ham has already been through that once, and a fresh ham is lean enough not to plateau, so there is no wrap point in the output.
What it assumes
- The ham goes on cold from the fridge, whole and bone-in. Spiral-cut hams dry out faster and want the short end of the range plus foil for most of the cook.
- You know which kind you bought. If the label does not say cooked and you are not sure, treat it as the other kind and take it to 165F. Guessing down on this one is the only genuinely dangerous mistake on this page.
- Any glaze goes on in the last 20 to 30 minutes. Sugar applied at the start of a four-hour cook burns.
- Elevation is not a factor for either kind of ham. Neither stalls, so both are dry-heat cooks in USDA's sense, and its guidance there is to use sea-level times unchanged. Local conditions will still be worth turning on for the weather notes, which is all it will give you on this page.
Questions
About 15 to 20 minutes per pound at 225F, so a 10 lb ham runs roughly 2.5 to 3.5 hours. You are reheating it and adding smoke, not cooking it, which is why it is so much faster than it looks.