Go get your jamón on!
When Christmas rolls around, you can bet your bottom dollar that every Spaniard is fixated on the exact same thing – ham. Actually, when don’t they think about it? Jamón (ham) is nothing short of a national obsession and once you’ve tasted Spanish ham, no other will do. Sorry, prosciutto.
Haunches of jamón, complete with intact hoofs, are everywhere there; dangling in clusters from bar ceilings, dominating tapas menus, and taking centre stage on hotel breakfast buffets. Spaniards each consume around 5kg of it annually, mainly raw but also cooked in a variety of dishes; the country produces some 40 million hams each year. Over the festive season, families buy a good one to share and with the price as much as 600 euros per ham – or even more – everyone pitches in to cover costs. It’s hard to underestimate how seriously the Spanish take their jamón, although if you’ve visited the country (where it’s possible to eat great ham for breakfast, lunch and dinner), you’ll already know.
It’s said only air, salt and time are needed to make jamón, the process involving exact temperatures and humidity for the right texture, complexity of flavour and alluring aromas to develop through enzyme action. Nothing’s added – no flavourings or lard coatings – with the finest hams hung to cure for up to five years. The beginnings of pig curing in Spain date to Roman times and traditionally, pigs were slaughtered in November and the hams cured in mountainous areas (or ‘serrano’, which means ‘mountain range’), where conditions are ideal for curing.
Although production is now largely industrialised (hams are bulk-salted using machinery, then aged in controlled factory-style situations), high quality jamón still receives individual attention. The moment of optimal curing is determined by a specialist who inserts a fine bone-sliver into the interior of each ham, with smell and visual appearance determining when it’s good to go; it’s an art, but then again everything about jamón is artful. When the enzymes have worked their magic, the developed flavours can vary among the producing regions in the Southwest of Spain – Extramadura, the Los Pedroches Valley near Cordoba, Huelva and Salamanca. And even by the year. Much like wine, hams have ‘vintages’ and some years yield more favourable growing/fattening conditions than others, affecting the end result.
Once, all jamón came from the native Ibérico pig but during the 20th century, bigger, faster-growing breeds like Duroc and Landrace were introduced and it’s these white pigs that now produce all jamón Serrano. The bulk of ham produced in Spain is Serrano and the best carries an “S” branding, guaranteeing the protective standards of the Consorcio del Jamón Serrano Español. Pigs eat a cereal diet and all Jamón Consorcio-Serrano ham is aged for at least a year, the meat has to come from Spain, and the hams must have a minimum fat cover of 1 cm, a minimum weight decrease during curing of 34%, plus pass individual inspection.
Jamón Ibérico, on the other hand, is made from the blackish Ibérico pig, a large Spanish/Portuguese breed with little hair and a lot of fat. Because of the high fat content, jamón Ibérico can cure for longer, resulting in highly complex, sweeter and overall more intense flavours, with deep red, highly marbled flesh. The ultimate hams are from acorn-fed Ibérico pigs, who spend their final fattening phase in the dehesa (pastures filled with centuries-old oak trees), where they free-range on herbs, grasses and around 7kg each of acorns (bellota) a day. It’s a diet that not only makes for fabulous-tasting ham, but a healthy one too. Antioxidants in the foraged diet alter the fat during the curing process, making it particularly high in mono-unsaturated oleic acid (the same as found in olive oil). No wonder the pigs are nicknamed ‘walking olive trees’ in Spain.
When you go to a bar or restaurant in Spain, there will be various kinds of ham, ranging in price. If the intact hoof is white, the ham’s Serrano. If black, it’s Ibérico. Legs of Ibérico ham will be plastic-tagged with one of four colour-grades; a black tagged ham is jamón Ibérico pata negra, the top quality. Made from 100% pure-bred, free-ranging Iberian pigs, only about 5% of Spanish hams bear this tag and it’s the most exxie of them all. A red tag (jamón Ibérico de bellota) also means the pigs have roamed free in the dehesa and fattened on acorns, but they’re 50% Iberian cross breed, not pure. Both black and red tagged pigs must have had one hectare of pasture each to free-range on to meet the strict requirements.
The next grade carries a green tag (jamón Ibérico cebo de campo), is also produced from 50% Iberian cross pigs, but fed an acorn diet supplemented with grains. Hams with a white tag, the lowest grade of jamón Ibérico, are also from cross-breed pigs, but their diet is exclusively natural commercial feed and they’re intensively reared in farms. This grade is called jamón Ibérico de cebo and it accounts for around 80% of the total Ibérico ham production.
Whichever ham you get your hands on, it’s best consumed at room temperature, not fridge-cold. Hand-carved is preferred to machine-cut in Spain, where it’s sliced tissue-thin so the fat melts the minute it hits your mouth and all those complex, sweet flavours are instantly released. A special knife, called a cuchillo jamonero, is used. It has a long, thin, lightly indented blade designed to glide through jamón flesh. A different knife removes the outer skin and fat and yet another, the puntilla, separates the bone from the meat in the interior of the ham. There are seven cutting zones on each ham , with flavour impacted by where the ham is taken from – for example the ‘maza’ is the main, thick zone with the biggest, sweetest and juiciest flavoured ham, while meat taken from the ‘caña o jarrete’ area, between the shinbone and fibula, is dense, fibrous, has intense ‘spicy’ flavours and is often served cut in small cubes. A whole leg is good for about 120 modest serves (or around 40 immodest ones!) and carving it the proper way, to maximise yield and presentation, is a skill;. ham carving in Spain is a profession. Complete with annual competitions to determine the best at it.
A lot to digest? You bet. It’s a big topic that probably deserves a book; on the other hand, maybe just grab a glass of chilled dry fino sherry or a crisp manzanilla (the most complimentary beverages), and go eat some jamón!