Curious Cook

Curious Cook in the New York Times: American dry-cured hams, country and European-style

In Wednesday's Curious Cook column I write about the new wave of fine American hams, cured with salt and eaten uncooked, like Spanish jamón iberico and serrano and Italian prosciutto.

Last month I attended the 5th World Congress of Dry-cured Hams, which was held in the Spanish town of Aracena, near Sevilla. I enjoyed some remarkable jamón there and learned a great deal from producers, scientists, and ham lovers. I'll be writing more about this later on.

In the meantime, if you like ham and haven't read David Arnold's brief and brilliant treatise on the subject, published a couple of years ago in Food Arts, get it here. It's packed with information and beautifully written.

Bringing Flavor Back to the Ham

HAVE you ever placed a vanishingly thin morsel of rosy meat on your tongue and had it fill your mouth with deepest porkiness, or the aroma of tropical fruits, or caramel, or chocolate? Or all of the above? A really good dry-cured ham can do just that. Not a standard pink, cooked ham, juicy with injected brine, but a raw ham preserved by the application of dry salt, hung up to age for months or years, then sliced paper-thin and eaten as is, uncooked, yet transformed into the intense, silken essence of meat. Spain and Italy are renowned for the quality of their dry-cured hams, their jamons and prosciuttos, which can sell for $30 to $100 a pound. America is not so renowned, even though dry-cured hams have been made in the South since Colonial times. These country hams evolved into an inexpensive regional product whose usual fate is to be soaked in water, then poached and baked with a sweet fruit glaze. Happily, the home ham picture began to brighten a few years ago. I recently tasted dry-cured hams from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Iowa, and some rival Europe’s best.