Neus Coronado learned to slice jamón in Spain and has done it professionally for five years. (CREDIT: Bonnie Berkowitz/The Washington Post)
Spanish jamón is a type of ham in the way that champagne is a type of fizzy drink.
Sure, it is a leg of pork. But it is wildly different from a typical American supermarket ham in nearly every other way, from the flavor to the free-range forests where the pigs are raised to the years-long curing process to the precise way you’re supposed to slice and eat it.
Jamón is not thick and pink but a deep red, delicately sliced finger food that resembles a slightly nutty, less-salty prosciutto. The cream of Spain’s ham crop, jamón Ibérico de bellota, is often lauded as the world’s best cured ham.
Whether you buy a jamón as a swanky appetizer for your next party or to keep in your kitchen for everyday noshing, there are some things jamón newbies need to know.
Got one. How do I cut it?
CaptionPhoto by (Xavi Gomez/Cover/Getty Images)
The perfect slice is bite-sized and very thin, said Rubén García, chef and owner of D.C.’s Casa Teresa. You should be able to place it on your tongue and wait a few seconds for the fat to melt and release its flavor before you chew it, he said.
Achieving such a precise cut is both a craft and a profession in Spain, and the best cortadores de jamón wield a slicing knife like a violin bow.
“It’s not only cutting ham, it’s cutting ham properly and presenting it properly, because it’s an art,” said García.
Neus Coronado, one of three full-time slicers García employs, can produce a tidy pinwheel of uniform, nearly paper-thin slices in just a few minutes.
You, on the other hand, will just have to try your best.
Don’t despair if your slices look more ... free-form.
“It’s not easy,” said Casa Teresa’s general manager Alex Muñoz, who said he thought he was a decent slicer before working closely with pros. “I was butchering it at my house in Spain all my life.”
Professional carvers also know how to maximize the amount of meat carved from the bone, a key still when dealing with an extremely pricey ingredient.
If you’re struggling, there are plenty of online tutorials, including this one from Cinco Jotas, one of Spain’s best-known jamón producers.
Because jamones are dry-cured, they can sit in their cutting stands at room temperature as long as the room is relatively cool and dry. That’s good news, because at two to three feet long, they’d be tough to wedge into a typical fridge. (One of the authors of this story keeps his on top of his washing machine.)
Be sure to cover the exposed meat with plastic wrap — or, to be authentic, the slab of fat you sliced off — so it doesn’t dry out.
Guinness recognizes at least four ham-related slicing records, all held by Spaniards: the longest slicing stint (72 hours 13 minutes 8 seconds), the most sliced in an hour (25.5 pounds, in 2,497 slices), the longest slice of meat (98 feet 9.4 inches or 30.11 meters) and the most people slicing meat simultaneously (205).
What makes this ham so special?
Basically, special pigs and a special process.
The most prized jamón is made from black Ibérico pigs, descendants of wild boar that are native to the forested meadows of southwestern Spain and southeastern Portugal.
After early piglet-hood, they are released to frolic and forage in huge dehesas, rolling forests partially converted to pastures. In fall and winter, they scarf the fresh acorns that fall from the trees and give the meat its slightly nutty flavor. One pig can eat 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of acorns a day.
The characteristics of the acorns come through so distinctly in the meat that connoisseurs can taste the difference in pigs raised in different regions.
Because the pigs need to move around and build muscle for the meat to marble and develop properly, the Spanish government mandates minimum space per animal based on the amount of tree cover in an area. Cinco Jotas, for example, allots five or more acres of land per pig — and sometimes double or triple that, depending on climate conditions, said communications director María Castro Bermúdez-Coronel in an email. Pigs regularly roam several miles each day.
At about two years old, the pigs are “sacrificed,” a preferred term for the traditional killing method.
The hams are then salted and hung in cellars to dry, part of a laborious curing process that takes years — typically three to five years at Cinco Jotas, for instance.
How do I know what to buy?
Jamón Ibérico comes in four classifications based on a pig’s genes and its diet, and labels are color-coded to reflect the strict standards set by Spain.
The priciest and highest-rated is 100 percent Ibérico de bellota, which can cost $1,600 or more in the United States for a typical 18-pounder. (In Spain, the same ham would cost 600 euros, or about $650, García said.) Only free-roaming, acorn-fed, full-blooded Ibérico pigs earn the coveted black label.
The FDA requirement to remove the black hoof is so tough for purists to stomach that some U.S. restaurants attach fake hoofs. García said he is considering covering the severed bone ends at his restaurant with baby-sized black Air Jordans. (We are mostly, but not entirely, sure he was joking.)
About this story
In December, deputy graphics director and jamón newbie Tim Meko asked several Spaniards in Post Graphics how to handle the jamón serrano he bought to serve at Christmas. The question and the meat sparked a weeks-long discussion, an unhealthy obsession in his dog and this story. Spain-based assignment editor Samuel Granados — he’s the one with a jamón on his washer — grew up eating Spanish ham and compiled a raft of information on the topic. Reporter Bonnie Berkowitz, who had not heard of jamón before that morning, was assigned to write the piece to make sure it was accessible to any readers who might be equally clueless. She has since sampled jamón Ibérico de bellota at Casa Teresa in the traditional way, with small breadsticks called picos and a dry amontillado.
Additional information came from cortador de jamón Alberto Tovar at Casa Teresa, the Spanish government website, Cinco Jotas, dehesa-extremadura.com, Consorcio del Jamón Serrano Español and Consorcio de Jabugo.
Samuel Granados works as a graphics assignment editor at The Washington Post. Previously, he worked as a senior graphics editor at Reuters covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and as the head of graphics at La Nación in Argentina.
Bonnie Berkowitz is a reporter in the Graphics department at The Washington Post who often focuses on Health & Science topics.