For a Taste of True Italian Prosciutto, Parma Is the Place

Except for the tall, shuttered windows, the factory doesn’t look that much different than any other moderately successful agricultural concern. But then again, the windows are the key.

For it is these windows that open and shut to capture the cool, dry air that blows in from the surrounding hills of the Po River valley and permits the small miracle that is the creation of top-quality prosciutto di Parma.

“In our hams, we have only three ingredients,” says Ettore Grisendi, the plant manager, “swine from our fields, salt from the sea and the weather.”

He hesitates and, not without pride, adds “Also the experience and skill of our workers.”

After an absence of more than 20 years, true Italian prosciutto--an uncooked, dry-cured ham--is once again available in the United States. And though there are scores of different prosciutti made in Italy, the prosciutto made just outside Parma is currently the only type available in the United States.

Italian prosciutto is as different from most American imitations as French Champagne is from most sparkling wines. While the imitations tend to be over-dried, brown and flaky, tasting mostly of the salt used for curing, a truly fine prosciutto is supple in texture and pink or pale red in color with the sweetness one associates with well-aged meat.

It all begins with the pigs, fed partly on the whey left over from the making of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. They must be raised in the strictly delimited region just outside Parma, killed at one of only 350 slaughterhouses and processed at one of 214 plants. It is a truly artisanal product.

The secret of a great prosciutto’s delicate sweetness and buttery texture lies--as much as any one factor--in the restrained use of salt during the curing process. While American hams tend to be aggressively salty, in true prosciutto, only enough salt is used to perform the essential task of drawing out the moisture. The rest of the cure is due to the air--cool and dry enough to discourage bacterial growth.

The cure takes anywhere from 300 days (the minimum for Italian products) to 400 days (the U.S.D.A.-mandated minimum for American sale). They are, in fact, individually branded with the date processing began. The longer a ham ages, the more buttery the texture--up to a point. Most prosciutti are at their best from 400 to 500 days old. Only exceptionally big hams, with high percentages of fat, can take extended aging, and most of those are claimed at the slaughterhouse by important restaurants. A 25-pound prosciutto (the legal minimum weight, post-production, is 12 pounds), aged more than 700 days is the equivalent of drinking an old Burgundy from an exceptional year.

When buying prosciutto you look for size and you look for age. What you do not look for is brand names. There aren’t any. The self-regulating consorzio (consortium) of ham producers has inspectors who check not only plant sanitation and production, but quality as well. Hams that do not live up to their standards (about 7% or 8%) are discarded. After all, the reputation of an entire industry is at stake, for all prosciutto from Parma is labeled only as prosciutto di Parma.

In Italy, that says it all.