Ibérico Sliced Cured Ham

Let’s start with the basics – what is a ham?

A ham is the meat of the leg – nearly always the back leg – of a pig, from its ankle to its rump. If you were to go to a butcher shop and ask for one that was raw, you’d be getting what’s called a fresh ham. You could cut it up and cook it like any other fresh meat. But in the US, we almost never buy fresh ham. Instead, practically all hams we buy are cured.

The method of curing has a huge impact on its flavor and how you eat it. There are two methods for curing ham: a wet cure, and a dry cure. (If those sound familiar, you’re not wrong! These two methods are both used for curing bacon.)

A “city” ham is wet cured and typically cooked before it’s sold.

A wet cured ham is cured with a saltwater brine. Traditionally, you’d soak the ham in the brine for a few days or weeks, until the salt had penetrated the ham fully. In industrial settings, that process is sped up by injecting the hams with brine. After curing, the hams may be smoked. Before they’re sold, they’re typically cooked.

These are the hams you’d buy at the supermarket and heat in the oven, sometimes with a glaze. The industry term for this style of ham is a city ham. City hams are juicy and sweet, and are your best bet for your special holiday meal. While they are ready to eat at room temperature, they’re particularly delicious heated in the oven.

A “country” ham is dry cured and aged for months or years before it’s sold.

A dry cured ham is also cured in salt, but instead of a brine, the raw ham is coated in dry salt, then aged for months or years. All that curing results in ham that tends to have a firmer texture and a saltier, deeper flavor than city ham.

Dry cured hams are common in the US across a band of Appalachia from Tennessee to Virginia, where they’re called country hams. American country hams are typically smoked, adding an additional level of savory flavor. Dry curing is also used for many of Europe’s most famous hams, including Spain’s jamón Ibérico, France’s jambon de Bayonne, and Italy’s prosciutto di Parma. These hams are generally not smoked (though in some corners of Europe you do find smoked hams, like northern Italy’s speck).

Thanks to the long curing time, dry cured hams are safe to eat without any cooking. For a tapas platter or charcuterie board, a dry cured ham makes for a stunning presentation and it’s so flavorful that even a few bites can go a long way.

When you buy a bottle of wine what factors do you consider? I’ll bet one is what grapes it’s made from. We expect that a Cabernet Sauvignon will taste different from a Pinot Noir or a Chardonnay.

How about when you buy a pork chop? Do you consider the breed of the pig? No? You’re not alone. Over the last half a century, the meat industry has selectively bred more and more standardized animals, taking the breed completely out of the consumer’s mind. Pork is pork, right? Well, maybe. The vast majority of the pork that you buy at the grocery today is likely to be a breed developed over the last few decades, so it’s all going to be pretty similar.

The current trend is towards speed over quality.

While we used to breed animals to be disease resistant, or good tempered, or hardy, or delicious, the current trend is toward one very particular trait: the ability to convert feed into meat as quickly as possible.

First, it happened with chicken. In 1925 it took fifteen weeks to grow a chicken that weighed 2.2 pounds. By 1990 you could grow the same chicken in about four weeks. The biggest cost to raising a chicken is the feed so the quicker you can raise a chicken the less feed you have to give it and the less expensive it is to raise. With the new, faster growing chickens, the slow growing chickens that had pecked around farms were economically obsolete. Within a few decades, dozens of centuries-old heritage breed chickens were almost extinct. They were replaced by a few new breeds. Chicken meat became cheap and suddenly the dream of a chicken in every pot became a reality. Well, maybe a McNugget in every bucket.

But there were a lot of tradeoffs. These chickens lost their disease immunity. Wo they started getting daily antibiotics in their feed. They grew too big too quickly for their skeletons to keep up causing them to have trouble moving around without fracturing bones. So they were jam packed into tiny cages that barely allowed them to move. And while the meat was plentiful, it was bland.

After seeing the financial success they had with developing new chickens meat executives turned their attention to pork. Today, commercial pigs grow faster and bigger than ever. Also, like chickens, the vast majority of modern pigs bear little resemblance to the breeds that were rooting around on farms 75 years ago.

Back then, pigs were raised both for their meat and for their fat. Did you know lard was the number one cooking fat in America until World War II? Then, during the war, lard was so important as a grease used in making explosives that advertising campaigns implored housewives to switch to using “more healthful” vegetable fats like margarine so that the lard could all be used in the war effort. Long before the Mediterranean Diet craze put the nail in lard’s coffin it was on its way out. The idea that animal fats were bad caught on. Farmers started breeding pigs to be leaner. The meat industry noticed that lean muscle developed much more quickly than more flavorful fat and that sped the changes along. Within a few decades pork became so lean and that it ended up being advertised as a stand-in for chicken.

The good news is that there are a handful of farmers out there who are still raising heritage breed pigs.

These are the same breeds that could have been raised by their grandparents. Here are a few that you may find on the market today, including Zingerman’s. They do taste different!

Berkshire: one of the most common heritage pigs today, Berkshire pork is tender and incredibly flavorful—you might call it especially “porky.” It’s a popular choice with chefs.

Duroc: first developed in New England around 1800, Duroc pork is earthy, nutty, bold, yet clean and juicy.

Ibérico Pata Negra: these are the famous pigs that root in the forests of southern Spain and eat the acorns to become Ibérico de Bellota. The meat is usually cured. When fresh it’s unbelievably rich and savory, almost like a cross between beef and pork.

Red Wattle: originally from New Orleans, Red Wattle pork has incredibly complex, herbaceous, subtly sweet flavor. Its prized fat melts in your mouth.

Tamworth: first developed in Ireland, and known for being one of the best breeds for bacon. The pork has sweet, nutty notes.