ham

Recipes

• Ham and Gruyère French Toast
  Kind of like a croque monsieur
• Shrimp and Okra Gumbo with Tasso
  Thickened with okra and flavored with ham
• Chicken and Andouille Gumbo
  Smoky sausage and chicken star in this classic
• Cream Cheese and Chive Scramble with Prosciutto
  Creamy eggs tucked in prosciutto
• Double-Smoked Ham
  Twice the flavor with half the effort
• Mozzarella, Prosciutto, and Fig Jam Panino
  A sophisticated sandwich
• Prosciutto Palmiers
  Cheating with frozen puff pastry...
• My Chipotle Cranberry Chutney
  
• Spring chicken
  
• Parisian Sandwich
  

Grinders

• Jamon, Jamon
  Despite excruciating delays, Spain's Iberico ham is poised to arrive in the U.S. No, really, this time we mean it!
• Homegrown Ham
  We've heard of genetically modified foods, but this is ridiculous.
• Leg Show
  How do you make the world's most expensive ham? It starts with what you put into the pig.
• Nothing Says Hanukkah Like Ham
  It's not kosher, but who cares?
• Jamón Ibérico de ... Iowa? ¿Que?
  An Iowa-based producer is starting to roll out jamón ibérico–style ham for domestic consumption.
• Packing Prosciutto
  Live by the frozen meat, die by the frozen meat.

Picks

• You Know What to Bring Home
  Benton's hickory-smoked country bacon.

Ingredients

• Ham, cooked
  Ham is a meaty, plump hog's upper hind leg that is commonly cured and smoked; it may be cooked or raw. Fully cooked brine-cured hams are the most common, and, if smoked, they are only lightly smoke...
• Black forest ham
  This moist, boneless German-style ham made from the top and bottom round only is smoked over pine and fir and coated with beef blood to give it a black exterior. Very lean and tender, it is fully c...
• Boneless ham
  This ham is easy to carve but is not as flavorful as bone-in ham; it takes longer to cook.
• Canadian and irish bacon
  Canadian bacon is made from the eye of the loin, formed into a rounded shape about 3 inches in diameter. More akin to ham, this cut is much leaner than American bacon made from the belly. Irish bac...
• Canned ham
  This boneless ham is sealed in a can and then cooked. It may consist of a whole piece of meat or pieces pressed together into a form and fused with a gelatin mixture. Less expensive than other type...
• City-cured ham`
  Deep rose or pink, moist, and sweet, this type is America’s most popular ham. Made by soaking the ham in brine and then boiling or lightly smoking, these hams may be injected—an industrial process ...
• Half ham
  Whole hams are quite large, so manufacturers often cut them in half. The larger butt half (or butt end), the upper leg, is meatier, fattier, easier to carve, and more expensive. The smaller shank h...
• Partially boned ham
  Partially boned hams have the difficult-to-carve hipbone and/or shank bones removed. Bone-in hams will be juicier, more flavorful, and quicker cooking then boneless.
• Picnic ham (picnic shoulder)
  This cut from the hog’s shoulder is cured and smoked like a ham. Similar to traditional hams, it is less tender and fattier than a true ham and cooks much quicker. Picnic ham is a good, inexpensive...
• Prosciutto cotto (italian cooked ham)
  This Italian version of cooked ham is cured in brine with sugar, bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon, and nitrates. It is then rinsed, dried, pressed into a mold, and simmered until fully cooked.
• Spiral-sliced ham
  This popular partially boned ham is precarved in a spiral around the central leg bone and combines good flavor and convenience.
• Sweet-pickle cured ham
  These hams are cured in seasoned sweet brine (usually a secret recipe of the producer). They may be called "sugar-cured" if brown sugar or molasses is added to the cure.
• Tasso ham
  Made from lean strips of boneless pork shoulder, tasso ham is marinated in spiced brine, coated with Cajun spices to make a spicy, peppery rind, and heavily smoked. Tasso is often diced and added t...
• Ham, country style
  Country-style ham is a specially cured and smoked ham that is traditionally prepared in rural sections of Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Vermont, and other states. Country ham refers to a ...
• Irish ham
  Belfast is famous for its pickled hams, which get their unique flavor from smoking over peat fires. This ham must be prepared like American country ham before eating.
• Smithfield ham
  According to the 1926 Statute passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, "Genuine Smithfield hams [are those] cut from the carcasses of peanut-fed hogs, raised in the peanut-belt of the State of V...
• York ham (wet-cured ham)
  This mild-flavored ham originally from York, England, has delicate pink meat. In England, it is traditionally served with Madeira sauce.
• Ardennes ham (jambon d’ardennes)
  This is an air-dried ham similar to prosciutto that comes from the Ardennes woods in Belgium. These hams are manually dry-salted with sea salt, juniper berries, thyme, and coriander, smoked over be...
• Bauerschinken
  This German-style dry-cured ham is made from the top round that is dipped in caramel and double cold smoked. Quite lean, it is dark red in color with a rich smoky taste.
• Bayonne ham (jambon de bayonne)
  This mildly smoked, boneless ham comes from Bayonne, the capital of the French Basque country. It is salted using local sea salt and then dried in that region for at least 7 months so that it devel...
• Capocollo
  Originating in the southern Italian province of Calabria, this spicy dry-cured pork shoulder can take up to 3 months to cure. The Italian-government-controlled product is called "Capocollo di Calab...
• Chinese ham (yunnan ham, xuanwei ham)
  Chinese dry-cured hams produced in China’s western provinces of Yunnan and Hunan are world famous. They are extremely popular in China, although they are not permitted to be imported into the Unite...
• Coppa
  This cylindrical Italian dry-cured salami is made of pork neck flavored with dry white wine and features red meat flecked with pinkish white. It is a labor-intensive, time-consuming sausage to make...
• Culatello
  Culatello is one of the most prized and expensive cured meats in Italy. It is produced in a small area around Parma. An entire hind leg of pork is boned and rubbed with salt, herbs, and spices, the...
• Jamón iberico
  This artisanal ham is dry-cured and accounts for only 5 percent of Spain’s hams.
• Lachsschinken
  The luxurious lachsschinken is a cured and cold-smoked center-cut boneless loin of pork, rolled in a thin layer of fat for tenderness and moisture. It is named for its similarity to smoked salmon (...
• Prosciutto
  Prosciutto is an Italian delicacy, both bone-in and boneless, cured by salting a pork leg and then air-drying it for 1 year or more. Italian prosciutto marked for export to the United States must b...
• Prosciutto di capriolo (roe buck prosciutto)
  This artisanal specialty, also called violino (violin) because of its shape, is a deer’s leg seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, and peperoncino and then aged for about 50 days. It is usually thinl...
• Prosciutto di cinghiale
  Proscuitto di cinghiale, Italian wild boar prosciutto, is processed like prosciutto, but the skin is kept on so that the ham absorbs salt and spices only through the inner side of the leg. It will ...
• Prosciutto di oca, prosciutto di anatra
  There is a tradition among Italian Jews to produce prosciutto from goose (oca) or duck (anatra) breast, because of the prohibition against eating pork. These "hams" are dry-cured and air-dried in a...
• Prosciutto di parma
  The world-famous prosciutto di Parma is made from the legs of pigs that have fed on the whey left over from making Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. The Consortio del Prosciutto di Parma carefully contro...
• Prosciutto di san daniele
  The origins of prosciutto di San Daniele, from the area north of Venice, go back to Celtic-Roman times. It is characterized by its flat guitar shape and dark red color. It has a pronounced aroma, a...
• Schinkenspeck
  This German specialty from the Black Forest is lean pork cut from the bottom round with a thin layer of fat on one side. It is dry-cured, dipped in caramel, and heavily smoked. It’s normally sliced...
• Serrano ham
  This violin-shaped, dry-cured ham is omnipresent in Spain. Like prosciutto, it’s cured with salt and then air-dried for a long period of time. It’s not meant to be cooked and is usually cut into pa...
• Westphalian ham (westfalischer schinken)
  Made in the Westphalia forest of Germany from pigs fed with acorns, this high-priced choice ham is cured and then slowly smoked over beech and juniper wood. A deep brown, dense ham, it’s usually sl...

Stories

• Down-Home Prosciutto
  You could call it domestic prosciutto. But then you’d be admitting that you eat it raw.
• Big-Time Barbecue
  An expert’s guide to succulent BBQ, the original slow food
• Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cravings
  Bread plus cheese plus heat, perfection times 10
• How to Feed Guests at a Cocktail Party
  Ham is the easy choice