Hamon - home prescription

For fans of delicious and exotic dishes will be good news that the traditional Spanish jamon, a variant of dried meat , you can cook at home. This requires a cool well-ventilated place and a certain time, during which the meat of the hamon should ripen. Only thanks to these conditions will you get a quality final product. Keep the jamon at home (even if it has already begun to cut) is very simple: hang under the ceiling in the kitchen, where it can be stored for up to a year and a half (a spatula - for up to a year), giving your home the original Spanish flavor.

Meat of a jamon has a unique property - it practically does not contain cholesterol. And thanks to low caloric content, the jamon refers to dietary meat delicacies. But due to the fact that it takes a long time to prepare, it is very expensive.

To understand what jamon is in Spain, you just have to get into this country once and see how it is done. It is desirable in the first weeks of November, when the production of the hamon begins. The ritual of slaughtering pigs from century to century was considered a holiday for the whole of Spain. Local residents say "to sacrifice" a pig, and not "to score" it. This process of beginning the manufacture of the hamon is still sacred.

To prepare a Spanish jamon, fresh meat of a pig is necessary. An obligatory condition that affects the taste of the final product is that it should be fattened only by acorns.

Hamon in Spanish

The recipe for a hamon is very simple - it is a pork ham, sea salt and an attic, well ventilated, room.

Ingredients:

Preparation

Spanish meat jamon is cooked on average for a year and a half. Pork ham is cleaned of excess fat and sprinkled with salt (necessarily sea). It lasts about 2 weeks, until it is salted. Then they are washed from the salt, and the ham is given a shape. Suspend in a well-ventilated room for drying. During drying, the temperature is regulated from the lower to the higher, the so-called sweating process takes place (excess fat and moisture comes out of the meat). And then they are transferred to special rooms or a cellar and left to ripen. Maturation, namely the final drying of the product lasts about 12 months.

Now, knowing how to prepare a jamon, you can conclude whether you should cook this delicacy yourself at home or buy it already ready in the store.