Spice Up Your Christmas with This Korean Chili-Glazed Ham

Christmas is, hands down, the best eating season of the year. It can also be a little uncomfortable, because, you know, family. This year, with the Brexit-related tension and impending sense of doom, we're a little more ambivalent about Thanksgiving than normal.

And while you might want to avoid your drunk Uncle Barry before dinner, it doesn't really matter what your political affiliation is once the food starts going around because everybody will be too busy stuffing their faces to argue about whether the apocalypse is literally imminent.

Yes, food is the great unifier, but only if it's damn good. And while the traditional family stalwarts might have kept people happy for years, this Christams is different, and it's time to add fresh meat to the mix to give the everybody something to talk about. We suggest this gochujang-glazed ham.

For too many years ham has been baked in honey, and nothing else. And honey-baked ham is perfectly fine, but let's just call it what it is: boring. That's why you should should be glazing your ham in this Korean sauce of chilies and fermented soy beans. It's bold, it's pungent, and perhaps most important of all—it will give your ham the coating of cultural diversity and acceptance that we all really need in these troubling times.

We need to make Christmas diverse again. But don't worry, the gochujang is also mixed with apple juice, maple syrup, espresso, and Worcestershire, so it will still taste familiar enough to keep uncle Cletus happy.