The Best Grocery Store Chains To Buy A Christmas Ham, According To Customers

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The winter holidays are the time for show-stopping meats — often meats you only have once a year. After the Thanksgiving turkey, it's time to start thinking about Christmas ham. Where to get one, though? Acquiring a good hunk of pork can be daunting, especially if you've never purchased one before. That's a lot of pressure! Don't worry, we're here for you. 

There are plenty of mistakes to avoid when cooking ham, and you want to stay on top of those. Feeling confident? Well, certain ingredients elevate baked ham from good to great, and that's worth exploring, too. After all, it's only the centerpiece of the meal that you're making for your closest loved ones. Oh no ... we turned the pressure back up again.

One thing you can't say about ham is that it's hard to find. Plenty of places have ham, and we're here to point you to the tastiest ones. We looked at customer reviews of hams from major grocery chains and found the best places to go for your Yuletide porker.

Okay, so ham is a fantastic centerpiece meat, but it can sometimes get pretty pricey. Does the cheapest grocery store in America carry a good ham? Mercifully, yes, it does. The Spiral Sliced Ham at Aldi is made by Appleton Farms, one of the chain's private label brands. While we really want to focus on customer opinion, it feels worthwhile to point out that this porker was the runner-up for best ham in a 2024 Consumer Reports taste test. Low prices don't have to mean low quality.

Anecdotal evidence agrees with the Consumer Reports test, too. One Redditor said that after years of Honey Baked Ham, an Appleton Farms ham roasted in a Dutch oven was the best ham they'd had. There's something to be said for trusting your own cooking skill and technique over a big-name brand. On a separate thread, another commenter said that the ham tasted just as good as Honey Baked, for half the price. There's a phrase you love to hear around the holidays, right?

A good holiday ham at Target? Really? We'll be the first to admit that Target's grocery can sometimes miss the mark, it's true. Not the case with holiday ham, apparently. In a 2024 Consumer Reports taste test, Market Pantry ham came out on top in a field that included hams from Aldi, Costco, Honey Baked Ham, and more. In addition to winning a blind taste test, the hams at Target can often be obtained for a pretty reasonable price.

Customer reviews aren't as completely enthusiastic as the Consumer Reports test, but still point to a highly rated product. The Hickory Smoked Spiral-Cut Bone-In Ham has a 4.5 out of five stars rating on Target's website, with 82% of people recommending the product as of this writing. Over on Reddit, one user who said that cooking ham was their specialty in the kitchen called Target's ham a good deal. Another user said the same, on a separate thread dedicated to frugality. Decent pork at a decent price? We have to hand it to Target for this one.

Now, here's a good place to look for ham. After all, sometimes Sam's Club has food deals that beat Costco. On the Sam's Club website, one customer said that a ham for this price was hard to beat. A commenter on Reddit said that their kids couldn't tell the difference between the Member's Mark Sugar Double Glazed Ham and Honey Baked Ham.

One TikTok user raved about the ease of preparation, saying that the ham turned out great. That person was serving a group of Cub Scouts, which is definitely a situation where a good amount of quality meat for an affordable price is paramount. Another TikTok user was excited about the price and claimed that it would feed his family for the entire holiday season. That brings up an underrated aspect of the holiday ham: freezing the leftovers! Cube that ham up, fry it with eggs for breakfast later. You can even add it to cornbread or make a quiche if you want. Leftover ham is so clutch.

You can get anything at Walmart, so why not a holiday ham, too? Brown sugar, honey-cured, even salted caramel — Walmart has just about any flavor of ham you could want. That's right, Walmart is a one-stop shop for both your holiday gift and holiday dinner needs. The question, of course, is does the ham hit?

"Brown sugar always hits," according to one Redditor. The Marketside Natural Juice Bone-in Spiral Cut Brown Sugar Double Glazed Ham has a 4.2 out of five stars rating from over 4,700 reviews on Walmart's website, as of this writing. One customer raved that not only was it the best ham they'd ever had, but also said that they look for it every holiday season. Another customer was happy with how moist the ham was after cooking. 

On the page for the hickory-smoked bone-in ham, another Walmart customer made like Obi-Wan Kenobi and said this was the ham you're looking for. If you're feeding a big crowd and can't decide between flavors, why not buy two different hams to compare and contrast? If nothing else, debating which ham flavor tastes better sounds more appealing than debating politics with your family.

Don't worry, we're not telling you to go drop a hundred bucks on a Serrano ham — although Costco's bougie ham is a better deal than you might think. No, we're talking about good, old-fashioned Kirkland Signature Antibiotic Free Spiral Ham. The cuts of meat that grandma always put in the middle of her biscuit. Costco does that stuff pretty well, too. The porkers here come with a nice brown sugar glaze that accentuates the savory flavors of the meat. Brown sugar and ham is one of those beautiful pairings, and if the holidays aren't the time for a little indulgence in brown sugar, we don't know when is. 

Kirkland Signature ham was given the honorific of "a popular pick" in Consumer Reports' 2024 taste test. Search the internet, and you'll find satisfied Costco customers confirming the title. One person on Reddit said that the Kirkland Signature ham tasted great without the glaze packet. That's one more highlight of ham — it's got a strong flavor, but it's still a pretty good canvas for any culinary experiment you want.

That's right, your favorite tiki-themed grocery chain sells holiday hams. This isn't Kahlua pork, though; these are the kinds of hams your grandpa in Georgia was raising. No long, pun-filled names for this Trader Joe's product. They're tasty porkers, though. Frick's Uncured Carver Hams at Trader Joe's have something of a deceptive name, since "uncured" simply means cured with natural ingredients like salt, beet extract, or celery salt. This cuts down on nitrate levels, although the curing process will naturally develop some nitrates. In general, you want to look for labels that read "no nitrates or nitrites added except those naturally occurring," or something like it. In fact, on Frick's uncured carver ham, the label boasts that very sentiment.

The consensus on Reddit seems to be that these are delicious without the accompanying glaze packet, with one Reddit user even calling it "damned good" without the packet. Another Redditor recommended cooking the ham with pineapple juice instead of water to ratchet up the flavor. Hey, ham and pineapple are a classic pizza combo for a reason. That combo tastes so good, it doesn't even need crust, sauce, and cheese to sing. 

Your first reaction might be surprise. Isn't Whole Foods on the pricier side, and ham already expensive? Well, at $5.58 per pound, Whole Foods' Premium Bone-In Spiral-Sliced Ham is a bit pricier than other hams on this list. People seem to think it's worth the cost, though. One Facebook user simply called it fantastic. When a person took to Reddit to solicit advice on where to buy a holiday ham, one commenter kept their answer short and sweet: Whole Foods.

Another Reddit user said they'd enjoyed holiday meals ordered from Whole Foods, and that they were impressed with the store's selection. On a separate thread, a commenter said that the best ham they ever made came from Whole Foods. Oh, and something to remember about this grocery store: you can totally ask for half portions of items at Whole Foods. That's right, no more overbuying. Just remember to be polite when you ask. You want to have holiday spirit when you buy your holiday ham, after all.