A healthy ham for the new year
January 1, 2003 | 12:00am
If you think you’ve had enough ham, maybe you haven’t tried jamón ibérico. Gourmets, chefs and world travelers – from the historic past to the present – have sung paeans to this Spanish culinary specialty. During the first century BC, the Greek geographer and historian Strabo extolled its excellence. The Roman poet Martial wrote, "…from the country of the mountain people (Iberians), bring me a ham and let the greedy eat steaks." Spanish Nobel Prize winner Camilo José Cela praised it as a "bite worthy of the chosen." Michelin Guide-rated chef Alain Ducasse conceded that "This ham is truly one of the world’s gastronomic jewels." Some have even called it the caviar of hams.
What makes jamón ibérico different from other hams?
Foremost is the pig breed used in making this ham. The Iberian pig is descended from the sus mediterraneus, a wild boar that roamed freely throughout Mediterranean forests in ancient times. Today’s Iberian pig, like its ancestor, is also left to graze freely throughout the dehesa ecosystem of woodlands and meadows in southwestern Spain.
The dehesa is situated between 500 and 1,000 meters above sea level, and is characterized by soft springs and summers, and cold winters. This ecosystem is unique to Spain and covers some 2.5 million hectares, spreading out mainly in the provinces of Córdoba, Huelva, Badajoz, Cáceres, Ciudad Real, Seville, Toledo and Salamanca, and even spilling over into Portugal. In this environment grows half of the world’s oak forests. It is the acorn, or bellota, of the oak tree – particularly the holm and the cork oak trees, and also the gall oak and chestnut trees – that makes a difference.
The Iberian pig feeds on a diet of these acorns during the montanera, the phase when the pigs are fattened, from the months of October and onwards. This process of fattening coincides with the time of the year when the trees produce most of their acorns. The pig feeds exclusively on acorns, grass, aromatic plants and whatever they may root from the ground, like tubers, mushrooms, small insects and even snakes. As part of its adaptation to the environment, the pig has even developed the ability to crack open the acorns, spit out the shell and feed on the meat inside.
During the montanera, a pig grazes on as much as 10 kilos of acorns, gaining as much as 700 grams of weight daily. At the end of the montanera, during the month of January or February, before pigs are slaughtered, they weigh anywhere from 170 to 230 kilos.
Because of the Iberian pig’s diet of acorns, it is blessed with fat that has a high level of oleic acid, the same monounsaturated fatty acid present in olive oil. Oleic acid has the well-known property of reducing bad cholesterol and improving levels of good cholesterol in the human body. This fact prompted famous Spanish nutrition scientist Francisco Grande Covian to call the Iberian pig a "four-footed olive tree."
And that’s not all. A study on jamón ibérico at the University of Extremadura in Cáceres discovered that, unlike other meats, Iberian pig flesh contains as much as four times the normal level of omega-3 fatty acids.
The process of making jamón ibérico reaches its final stage when the pork cuts are cured. The ham legs and shoulders are salted and left to stabilize in a controlled environment for three months, before being moved to curing halls where the hams stay anywhere from three to seven months to develop their flavor. During this time, the hams develop molds, similar to those found in blue cheese. They are then moved to cool and dark cellars where they mature anywhere from nine months to two years. At the end of this process, the hams will have lost 40 percent of their original weight. They will have fully developed the properties that distinctly characterize jamón ibérico.
In 1996, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade organized a group of jamón ibérico producers into a consortium that will provide quality control, a seal and guarantee to all jamón ibérico produced in Spain. Real Ibérico now has 26 members representing 90 percent of total exports of jamón ibérico.
According to Real Ibérico, jamon ibérico should be pink to purple red with streaks of fat in the tissue. Slices should be shiny. Fat should be white to very pale yellow. The ham should have the characteristic V-cut in hind-leg hams and a half moon in shoulder hams, or paletas. A jamón should weigh anywhere from 5.5 to nine kilos, while a paleta should weigh from 3.5 to six kilos.
The consortium endorses two kinds of ham: The jamón and paleta ibérica de bellota, which are made from acorn-fed Iberian pigs; and the jamón and paleta ibérica, which are made from Iberian pigs that have not reached the proper weight for jamón ibérico because of the scarcity of acorn during the montanera. All products receive the appropriate tag, a dark green one with the Real Ibérico logo for bellota hams, and a white and green seal for ibérico hams. All hams carry the ham manufacturer’s identification mark, as well as a bar code that will help gourmets trace the identity of the pig used in making the ham, as well as its source. There are now initiatives to embed microchips into all four hocks of an Iberian pig to enable each pig to be properly identified.
For many gourmets, all these details are secondary to the ham itself. What does it taste like?
Since the ham is sliced wafer-thin, each piece is a bright shiny red one. If you look at it closely, you will notice streaks of fat running throughout the slice of ham. A slice of jamón ibérico melts in the mouth. It’s got a unique nutty flavor and oily quality unlike other hams. You can’t let go of the slice in your mouth, while you can’t stop your hand from reaching out for another slice on the platter. Delicious is too tame a word to describe jamón ibérico. The closest description gourmets have agreed on to describe this ham is bliss. And after you’ve tried some of it, you’ll never want any other ham.
What makes jamón ibérico different from other hams?
Foremost is the pig breed used in making this ham. The Iberian pig is descended from the sus mediterraneus, a wild boar that roamed freely throughout Mediterranean forests in ancient times. Today’s Iberian pig, like its ancestor, is also left to graze freely throughout the dehesa ecosystem of woodlands and meadows in southwestern Spain.
The dehesa is situated between 500 and 1,000 meters above sea level, and is characterized by soft springs and summers, and cold winters. This ecosystem is unique to Spain and covers some 2.5 million hectares, spreading out mainly in the provinces of Córdoba, Huelva, Badajoz, Cáceres, Ciudad Real, Seville, Toledo and Salamanca, and even spilling over into Portugal. In this environment grows half of the world’s oak forests. It is the acorn, or bellota, of the oak tree – particularly the holm and the cork oak trees, and also the gall oak and chestnut trees – that makes a difference.
The Iberian pig feeds on a diet of these acorns during the montanera, the phase when the pigs are fattened, from the months of October and onwards. This process of fattening coincides with the time of the year when the trees produce most of their acorns. The pig feeds exclusively on acorns, grass, aromatic plants and whatever they may root from the ground, like tubers, mushrooms, small insects and even snakes. As part of its adaptation to the environment, the pig has even developed the ability to crack open the acorns, spit out the shell and feed on the meat inside.
During the montanera, a pig grazes on as much as 10 kilos of acorns, gaining as much as 700 grams of weight daily. At the end of the montanera, during the month of January or February, before pigs are slaughtered, they weigh anywhere from 170 to 230 kilos.
Because of the Iberian pig’s diet of acorns, it is blessed with fat that has a high level of oleic acid, the same monounsaturated fatty acid present in olive oil. Oleic acid has the well-known property of reducing bad cholesterol and improving levels of good cholesterol in the human body. This fact prompted famous Spanish nutrition scientist Francisco Grande Covian to call the Iberian pig a "four-footed olive tree."
And that’s not all. A study on jamón ibérico at the University of Extremadura in Cáceres discovered that, unlike other meats, Iberian pig flesh contains as much as four times the normal level of omega-3 fatty acids.
The process of making jamón ibérico reaches its final stage when the pork cuts are cured. The ham legs and shoulders are salted and left to stabilize in a controlled environment for three months, before being moved to curing halls where the hams stay anywhere from three to seven months to develop their flavor. During this time, the hams develop molds, similar to those found in blue cheese. They are then moved to cool and dark cellars where they mature anywhere from nine months to two years. At the end of this process, the hams will have lost 40 percent of their original weight. They will have fully developed the properties that distinctly characterize jamón ibérico.
In 1996, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade organized a group of jamón ibérico producers into a consortium that will provide quality control, a seal and guarantee to all jamón ibérico produced in Spain. Real Ibérico now has 26 members representing 90 percent of total exports of jamón ibérico.
According to Real Ibérico, jamon ibérico should be pink to purple red with streaks of fat in the tissue. Slices should be shiny. Fat should be white to very pale yellow. The ham should have the characteristic V-cut in hind-leg hams and a half moon in shoulder hams, or paletas. A jamón should weigh anywhere from 5.5 to nine kilos, while a paleta should weigh from 3.5 to six kilos.
The consortium endorses two kinds of ham: The jamón and paleta ibérica de bellota, which are made from acorn-fed Iberian pigs; and the jamón and paleta ibérica, which are made from Iberian pigs that have not reached the proper weight for jamón ibérico because of the scarcity of acorn during the montanera. All products receive the appropriate tag, a dark green one with the Real Ibérico logo for bellota hams, and a white and green seal for ibérico hams. All hams carry the ham manufacturer’s identification mark, as well as a bar code that will help gourmets trace the identity of the pig used in making the ham, as well as its source. There are now initiatives to embed microchips into all four hocks of an Iberian pig to enable each pig to be properly identified.
For many gourmets, all these details are secondary to the ham itself. What does it taste like?
Since the ham is sliced wafer-thin, each piece is a bright shiny red one. If you look at it closely, you will notice streaks of fat running throughout the slice of ham. A slice of jamón ibérico melts in the mouth. It’s got a unique nutty flavor and oily quality unlike other hams. You can’t let go of the slice in your mouth, while you can’t stop your hand from reaching out for another slice on the platter. Delicious is too tame a word to describe jamón ibérico. The closest description gourmets have agreed on to describe this ham is bliss. And after you’ve tried some of it, you’ll never want any other ham.
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