Jamon Iberico

When the word ‘Jamon’ is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is Spain with its popular dry cured-hams. Even though it is considered as one of life’s subtle delicacies, the Jamon is a common part of daily life in most Spanish homes. In fact, it is estimated that a typical Spaniard consumes an average of five kilos of ham each year. Throughout Spain, about 39 million hams are cured annually. However, the popularity of the Jamon extends well beyond Spain. Jamon Iberico is among the favorites of foreigners owing to its unique taste and texture. The Iberico is sometimes called Jamon de Pata Negra or Jamon de Bellota.

The process of making an Iberico Ham starts shortly after the birth of the pig. By far the best among the Spanish pigs is the Iberian hog. Only the cured hams that come from these hogs can be called Jamon Iberico. It comes in two varieties – the Belotta and the Recebo. The Belotta, or the finest quality, is reared free-range in the mountains on a diet of nothing but acorns. For a period of five months, which is usually from October to January, the pigs are free to roam on the countryside and consume as much acorns as they desire during a certain period called the “montanera”. On the other hand, the Recebo comes next in quality and the Iberian pigs are fed with a mixture of acorns, pasture and commercial feeds. The Recebo is a good substitute for those who can’t afford the Bellota yet want to savor the excellent taste and texture.

Jamones

After the grazing period the pigs are slaughtered. The hams are then wrapped in cloth and manually pressed to squeeze any remaining blood, and then placed in nitrified salt. Following a period of about a day per kilo, the hams are removed from the trough after 9 to 14 days. The salt is washed off and the hams are hung to dry. The timeframe for drying is usually 30 to 40 days at a temperature of 8 to 10 ºC.

During the next 6 to 15 months, the ham stays in the curing house where it will develop a deep red color and exude the aroma of cured ham. The Jamon Iberico is often referred to as an “olive tree on the hoof” because during the curing process the fat is transformed into good cholesterol, much like olive oil. As the hams age, mold grows on the surface of the meat, adding more flavor. More water leaves the meat, locking in the flavors and making the ham a bit denser.

Spanish cured hams lose up to 40 percent of their weight after the entire process. What emerges from the curing house after a couple of years is nothing short of the extraordinary. The Jamon Iberico is ready to hit the markets. However, the best and the finest Spanish hams can further undergo curing and stored for 7 to 13 months, a process referred to as añejado. This process takes the Jamon Iberico to another level. In the hierarchy of foods, the Jamon Iberico is absolute royalty.

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Jamon iberico

Ham, or rather Jamón, is a staple of Spanish cuisine. Not boiled ham,not cooked ham but really Jamón salted and dried in the wind on the hillsides of Extremadura or Teruel… ok that is the romantic version but there are a lot of very scared pigs in Spain looking at how they can escape or lose four limbs to avoid the inevitable hanging out on the hillside. So what do you need to know?

Jamon iberico

• Jamón is a great delicacy and should not be confused with the reconstituted stuff found in tins in the UK called spam (Spare Parts and meat) An added bonus is that Jamón does not generally fill up your inbox with offers for Viagra and Free Business Cards (Yes I am talking to you Vistaprint)

• The best Jamón is generally thought to be Pata Negra which you can tell by the large nail on the end of the leg being coloured black.

• Embutidos ibéricos 7 Bellotas®

  Price per  Kg
  

  Jamón Ibérico de Bellota (+ 48 meses)  49,80 €

  Jamón Ibérico de Recebo (+ 34 meses)  29,95 €

  Jamón Reserva (Graso)  15,10 €

  Paletilla Ibérica de bellota ( Gran Reserva)  27,70 €

  Paleta Ibérica de Recebo (+ 20 meses)  17,60 €

  Lomo Ibérico de Bellota 34,90 €

  Lomo Ibérico de Recebo 28,30 €

  Lomo Extra 16,40 €

  Chorizo Ibérico de Bellota (cular)  19,80 €

  Chorizo ibérico (cular) 12,60 €

  Salchichón Ibérico de Bellota (cular)  17,80 €

  Salchichón Ibérico (cular)  11,60 €

  Boneless

  Jamón ibérico de Recebo 34,90 €

  Paleta ibérica de Recebo 23,70 €

  Jamón Reserva 13,70 €

  Vackium Packs
  

  Jamón  Ibérico de Recebo 45,90 €

  Paleta Ibérica de Recebo 35,99 €

  Jamón Reserva 21,90  €

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Spanish ham

After years in the shadows of the cuisines of France and Italy, Spanish foods are demanding and deserving main- course treatment.

“Our gastronomy has never been as popular as it is now,” Ferran Adria, the famed avant-garde chef of el Bulli restaurant in Roses, Spain, said in an e-mail interview translated from Spanish.

In cookbooks and on television, Spain’s cuisine has become a must-have. Traditional ingredients once limited to specialty shops — manchego cheese, Iberian and serrano hams, chorizo, sardines and anchovies — are now commonplace.

Spanish ham

Today, Spanish cooking is known for an unusual blend of ultra-avant-garde creations — so-called molecular gastronomy, in which liquid nitrogen has become a standard cooking tool — and more rustic fare, such as fabada, a pork and bean stew.

Because S panish cuisine and the chefs who produce it are hot at the moment , it is the perfect excuse for a minor makeover of the classic Spanish stew called fabada.

Traditional versions include six or more pork products, including bacon, serrano ham, blood sausage and, of course, a pig’s tail or foot. It usually also is made from dry white beans soaked for at least several hours or overnight.

Most of that won’t fly in the typical American kitchen. I started by ditching the dry beans for canned. The quality and price are good, and the convenience shaves hours off the recipe.

For the pork products, I kept as many traditional ingredients as practical — bacon, chorizo, serrano ham. But that meant the tail, feet and blood sausage had to go. To compensate for lost flavor and volume, I went with smoked bacon and smoked ham.

The resulting soup is deliciously rich. You’ll want some fresh bread for sopping up the liquid.

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Jamon Serrano

The art of carving Jamón Serrano

The first time I heard a connoisseur describe a jamon serrano to me was akin to being introduced to an intimate friend. My friend, and the narrator of the culinary fantasy, was of course a Spaniard. We were stranded in an airport, lingering in that interminable airport purgatorial space, when I asked her what made a jamon serrano so special.

She took a deep breath, looked off into the middle distance, and began a soliloquy about the many factors that determine the worth of a true jamon.

I had to take her word for it until a recent trip to Madrid where I was introduced first hand to that intimate friend, that luscious shank of pork meat known as the Serrano Ham.

noticed as our host Antonio invited us to a late night snack upon our arrival, was the ritual around the storing, cutting, and eating of a jamon serrano.

From the open air pantry, Antonio produced a sizeable ham, already secured on what looked like a rotisserie skewer with a solid wood base, a proper device for carving the ham.

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Spanish ham

Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty sure if you got my friends and I together, I’d know way more than them about the art of cured ham in Spain.

Jamon iberico

I ate tons of it over there during my golf trip earlier this month, and learned a little over every thin, little slice. For instance, if you walk into a cured meat shop, with all the legs hanging around everywhere, these seemingly indifferent hunks or ham all have different prices. That’s based on what kind of pig it is. The most prestigious pig is a black, Iberian pig that roams freely and eats nothing but acorns on a hillside, giving their legs the leanest meat.

siete bellotas - 7 Bellotas TM - best cured ham from Spain

Spain - Cured Hams - Jamon iberico

I learned this and plenty more on cured meats, tapas and wine over two days with Sergio Refugio, who runs Cooking Holiday Spain. He offers gastronomy tours mixed in with historical sightseeing of some of the Costa Del Sol’s most historic towns like Ronda and Malaga. If you’re headed to Spain for a golf trip, you should really only be spending half the time golfing. Jonathan Snell of Simply Golf Holidays (and partner with my friends over at London Golf Tours, who sends his golf groups to Sergio when they’re looking to learn all about Spain’s gastronomical delights, says a week’s trip often has four days of golf in it and three days off the course (stay tuned for my feature: 18 things to do off the golf course on the Costa Del Sol). On these days off, you can do anything from tours of Alhambra & other historical sights, to cooking classes, to lounging on a Mediterranean beach all day and doing absolutely nothing.

During my trip I also went from despising olives to adoring them, having them just about every time I had a drink in my hand. This is olive country after all. Olives are served just about everywhere in Spain - even when you order a simple beer.

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Spanish ham

There’s trouble afoot in the world of high-priced Spanish hams. A black foot to be precise.

Less than a year after the U.S. government finally allowed the import of Spain’s succulent and exceedingly expensive jamon Iberico de bellota, the cured meat long sought by American gourmets has become caught in a quagmire of regulations and trade wars.

The trouble started just months after the hams - traditionally presented with the distinctive black hoof still attached - began arriving. Someone noticed that the hoofs violated a USDA sanitary rule requiring they be removed.

Jamon iberico

USDA spokeswoman Peggy Riek says the rule, which also applies to domestic production, is designed to reduce the risk of contamination. So officials began making importers cut off the hoofs. It satisfied the regulations, but irritated eaters.

“In all its glory, it won’t be the same without the hoof,” says Jonathan Harris, co-owner of LaTienda.com, an online retailer of Spanish wine and food, including the bellota ham.
Meanwhile, the ham also is caught in a trade dispute between the United States and Europe that could double its already exorbitant price.

Spanish ham

As of April 23, dozens of European foods, from mineral water to chickens, could be slapped with steep new taxes.

The tax - which is 100 percent on cured Spanish hams shipped with the bone - is the latest parry in a long-running quarrel with the European Union over its ban on U.S. beef produced with growth hormones.

“You’re just hurting individual businesses,” says Taylor Griffin, president of The Rogers Collection, a Portland, Maine-based luxury foods importer. “You’re not helping American trade in any way.”

The high-end ham is made from pampered, free-range pigs fattened on acorns in the forests of southwestern Spain. The acorn diet gives the meat a satiny taste that sets it apart even from other prized Iberico hams. It can sell for $1,400 for a full ham from thigh to hoof and is described without irony as the Holy Grail of ham.

“It’s the best ham in the world. It’s the caviar of ham. I’m such a proponent of it,” says chef Terrance Brennan of the New York restaurants Picholine and Artisanal. “Once you have it, you can’t go back to proscuitto. . . . For me, it’s sublime.”

Strict regulations kept the bellota and other Iberico hams out of this country until a Spanish company, Embutidos Fermin, built a slaughterhouse that met muster. They began importing Iberico hams to the U.S. last year in partnership with Rogers Collection and chef Jose Andres.

The pending arrival of Iberico hams in the United States made headlines. Even then-candidate Barack Obama indulged in a sample during a campaign stop last year in Philadelphia. He called it “delicious.”

There is hope for ham lovers. The tariff covers only hams shipped on the bone, so sliced products won’t be affected. And U.S. trade officials already have delayed the tariff from the original date of March 23 to give them time to hash out an “interim solution” with their European counterparts.

The tariff also is being challenged by Nestle Waters North America, a Greenwich, Conn.-based subsidiary of Switzerland-based Nestle SA that sells Pellegrino mineral water. The company claims in U.S. International Trade Court that U.S. trade officials improperly exceeded their authority with the tariff, in part because the value of the imported goods exceeds the amount allowed by law.

On the hoof issue, Griffin says the governments of Spain and the United States are working to solve it, though the USDA said it has yet to receive an appeal. Meanwhile, Harris says La Tienda will just have to sell bellota ham without the hoof.

He says they still have some of the hoofed ham in stock. But once they’re gone, that’s all folks.

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Spanish ham - Jamon iberico

There’s trouble afoot in the world of high-priced Spanish hams. A black foot to be precise.

Jamon iberico

Less than a year after the U.S. government finally allowed the import of Spain’s succulent and exceedingly expensive jamón Ibérico de bellota, the cured meat long sought by American gourmets has become caught in a quagmire of regulations and trade wars.

The trouble started just months after the hams — traditionally presented with the distinctive black hoof still attached — began arriving. Someone noticed that the hoofs violated a USDA sanitary rule requiring they be removed.

USDA spokeswoman Peggy Riek says the rule, which also applies to domestic production, is designed to reduce the risk of contamination. So officials began making importers cut off the hoofs. It satisfied the regulations, but irritated eaters.

bellota ham

“In all its glory, it won’t be the same without the hoof,” says Jonathan Harris, co-owner of spanish deli, an online retailer of Spanish wine and food, including the bellota ham.

Meanwhile, the ham also is caught in a trade dispute between the United States and Europe that could double its already exorbitant price. As of April 23, dozens of European foods, from mineral water to chickens, could be slapped with steep new taxes.

The tax — which is 100 percent on cured Spanish hams shipped with the bone — is the latest parry in a long-running quarrel with the European Union over its ban on U.S. beef produced with growth hormones.

“You’re just hurting individual businesses,” says Taylor Griffin, president of The Rogers Collection, a Portland, Maine-based luxury foods importer. “You’re not helping American trade in any way.”

Spanish Ham - Jamon iberico de bellota

The high-end ham is made from pampered free-range pigs fattened on acorns in the forests of southwestern Spain.

The acorn diet gives the meat a satiny taste that sets it apart even from other prized Iberico hams.

It can sell for $1,400 for a full ham from thigh to hoof and is described without irony as the Holy Grail of ham.

“It’s the best ham in the world. It’s the caviar of ham. I’m such a proponent of it,” says chef Terrance Brennan of the New York restaurants Picholine and Artisanal. “Once you have it, you can’t go back to proscuitto … For me, it’s sublime.”

Iberico Hams - Spanish Ham

They began importing Iberico hams to the U.S. last year in partnership with Rogers Collection and chef Jose Andres.

The pending arrival of Iberico hams in the United States made headlines. Even then-candidate Barack Obama indulged in a sample during a campaign stop last year in Philadelphia. He called it “delicious.”

There is hope for ham lovers. The tariff covers only hams shipped on the bone, so sliced products won’t be affected.

And U.S. trade officials already have delayed the tariff from the original date of March 23 to give them time to hash out an “interim solution” with their European counterparts.

The tariff also is being challenged by Nestle Waters North America, a Greenwich, Conn.-based subsidiary of Switzerland-based Nestle SA that sells Pellegrino mineral water.

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Jamon iberico - Spanish ham

Pata Negra.

A pata Negra is the ham most correctly termed jamon iberico as these Spanish hams come from the Iberian pig, a black pig descended from the wild boar. They were once the predominant race in Spain but are not so common today, being mainly found in Andalucia, and their hams are highly prized.

Jamon iberico

The pigs that produce Jamon iberico de bellota are pasture fed on acorns and it is this natural rearing which is so important in giving the meat its delectable and unique flavor. In today’s health conscious world they are to be valued as a meat low in saturated fats and cholesterol and as such are an important part of the healthy Mediterranean Diet. Serrano ham contains a high level of oleic acid, a mono-unsaturated fat which can have the effect of lowering cholesterol levels and has also recently been proved to have anti cancer properties. This is the oil found in olive oil which has also been receiving very good reports in the health press in recent years.

So next time you are in Spain be sure to try some Jamon iberico, I am sure there isn’t a bar in the land which does not serve this wonderful ham.

Try asking for a catalan which is a bocadillo, or large roll, served with jamon iberico, cheese and olive oil.

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Classification of Iberian hams

An array of semiconductor sensors has been tested as an artificial olfactory system for the classification of Iberian hams. Iberian hams can be classified into different types: “Montanera” hams and “Pienso” hams according to the rearing system. The multisensor is composed by 15 sensing elements formed by tin oxide thin layers deposited by rf reactive sputtering.

Artisan Iberian Hams - Gallegos de Solmirón, Salamanca

Hams were analysed by using two sampling methods: static headspace generation and purge and trap method. The extraction conditions have been optimised for both methods. A good discrimination of the two types of Iberian ham has been obtained through the statistical method of principal component analysis (PCA).

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Jamón ibérico de bellota

Jamón ibérico de bellota is available using the age-old traditional methods, or organically. Fed on acorns, the Iberian pigs roam wild in pastures and oak groves. The resulting flavour is irresistibly unique: rich, creamy, and deep. Like olive oil, more than half of the fat of the jamón is healthy fat, with no added preservatives. Just as our jamón is served in top restaurants worldwide, we bring you one of nature’s most exquisite delicacies.

Gallegos de Solmirón - Jamones ibericos - 7 Bellotas

We stock a range of jamón all of exceptional quality and in the highest grade possible (‘de bellota’ – of the acorn). This includes both back legs and front legs and all our hams have been cured for at least two years and up to 3 and a half years depending on type and weight.

Jamón ibérico

Jamón Ibérico lacks cholesterol, added fat or preservatives and it is no wonder that this delicacy is declared to be one of the most exquisite natural foods in existence. An exclusive combination of the geographical setting, traditional expertise and unique raw materials results in the unmistakable taste and aroma of this delicacy.

Jamones ibericos - 100 % artesans

Curing Jamón ibérico de bellota

The lengthy process of curing jamón starts with carefully and naturally grown raw materials. The Iberian race of pig from which our jamón is produced is unique to the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and is commonly referred to as the “black-leg” due to its distinctive characteristics. No other cured meat is made from this exclusive race of pig, which also has the special ability to transform about half of its fat into good fat, comparable to olive oil. This exceptional characteristic is not replicated by any other race of pig in the world.

The pigs are reared on natural feeding based on acorns “bellota” in an idyllic setting of evergreen and corn oaks. Another main characteristic of the Iberian pig is the infiltration of intermuscular and intramuscular fat. This makes the jamón appear ‘marbled’, which is one of the distinctive signs of top quality. The curing process of jamón involves a long and careful process of Mediterranean salting, drying and ripening. Combining both traditional processes with modern technology allows the quality to be preserved while providing all the sanitary guarantees.

Best Guijuelo - 7 Bellotas

7 Bellotas - Best non-organic iberico ham from Guijuelo

Our non-organic hams have been granted and have held the “Guijuelo Ham Brand of Origin” award ever since its conception, confirming the highest quality for our product. Our organic hams were the first of its kind and in 2002 won First Prize for Product of the Year at the Biofach Organic Food Expo in Germany.

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