Jamon Iberico

If you haven’t read the story about this ham here is a link: http://www.jamon.com/iberico.html

This ham is so unique because of the pig breed, the environment it is raised in, the feed, the curing and the long time for aging, I don’t see how it can be duplicated. Just saying

I started curing a whole ham (which I deboned) December 29,2015. Getting ready to wash, tie & equalize for another month. I plan to stitch it back into shape and use a UMAI Dry bag with netting on the outside to keep it close to the meat. I’m gonna put it into a ham press and hang to dry. I used a Prosciutto DiParma type recipe. The ham was on sale so it only cost about $35 for a 21lb ham (18.25 boned out).

But you will have to wait until December 2016 or longer for me to answer your question.

I didn’t put it in a Umai bag yet, I bought the sample bundle so I’ll use whichever one it fits best in. I am curing for 3 days per lb, so 55 days. Monday I will rinse it and start equalizing at 48 degrees and 70-75% humidity for about 30 days. After that I’ll put it into drying mode.

I don’t think it’s necessary to debone it and will probably work fine in the Umai bag. I was a butcher for about 10 years so boning the ham was easy for me. I chose to bone it out because being my first time trying something this large I didn’t want to chance bone rot, but if this comes out successful I will try the next one with the bone in.

Btw, I rinsed, stitched and bagged it yesterday in the 16×28 bag which had plenty slack. I then put netting over that to keep the bag close to the meat surface incase the vacuum seal failed. I put the ham into my ham press and placed it into a meat lug on a rack and covered it with a clean large plastic bag to keep the humidity high for the month of equalization. I’ll take it out and hang it next month to start drying.

I have photos, but I don’t use the photo sharing websites.

Done, sent them today.