If the honey-glazed spiral sliced ham is anything like the place near me makes then it's no contest. That stuff is crazy good.

"Ham and Water Product"

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Honey glazed! Honey glazed!

Spiral. It will have a lot more flavor. Plus, the delicate cut with glaze on every slice is something people love.

These are both basically the same industrial pork product, but differently treated. One is not a better ham than the other, at the base level of what kind of meat it is, how it was raised, butchered, etc. The difference is in the flavor resulting from how they're cured. Plain ham is brined. Spiral ham is injected with seasoning, sugar and salt and then dressed with the glaze, and it's "crazy good," just like arse says. If you're having people over, most people will clean up a spiral ham, where they'd leave a plain ham kind of mildly picked at. Spiral ham also works really well as leftovers, if you have leftovers. It dices well into quiche, mac and cheese, etc., and makes for a great little sandwich on a leftover snowflake roll.

The "ham and water product" thing sounds creepy, I know, but is a legally designated status about how much brine has been injected (I learned all about this when buying ham for my wedding; it means it's been injected with lots of brine so it weighs more). Neither of these is a high-end, rustic, artisanal pork product and nobody really pretends it is (they're giving 'em away, after al). They are both your basic, hearty, American, feed-a-crowd, highly spiked-flavored ham and most people enjoy it just fine. If you want to do better, like a real, smoked/cured/wet-cured ham from an organic farmer, you'll be paying about 6 times the price per pound. For most regular occasions that's not going to worth the premium. For my wedding, it was worth it, but for Easter for a crowd I would also opt for industrial pork.

But go for the spiral, it's delicious stuff.

Thanks all! I think I will go for that spiral.

I did! Got about 9 lbs. it's just us plus my Dad so hopefully we are hungry :P