What is the difference between speck and prosciutto

Country Ham Cured, smoked, and hung to dry for months, this is the Southern answer to prosciutto. Plays very well with a bit of honey. City Ham Nothing says Easter dinner like a sweet, spiral-sliced ham. These guys are brined instead of dry-cured, often though not always smoked, and usually sold fully cooked, yielding juicy, tender slabs of porky goodness just waiting to be baked and glazed to perfection.

Aged a minimum of 13 months, prosciutto di San Daniele is savory and refined. Another much-loved style of cured ham is speck Alto Adige. Alto Adige is where the Mediterranean and Central Europe meet, and the process for making speck includes the air-drying technique of the Mediterranean and the light smoking common in Central Europe.

Producers use not only salt to cure the meat, but also their own proprietary blends of pepper , bay leaf, juniper berries, and rosemary before aging it for at least 22 weeks. Ham in France is jambon, and there are jambons from many regions of the country. The most commonly found French artisanal ham in the U. It is is also the most known dry ham and the ham most consumed by the French.

According to the Bayonne Ham Council , it comes exclusively from pigs born and reared in the South West of France that are fed a corn-based diet. This climate gives it its characteristic softness. In terms of taste, it is a fairly dry ham, with a melting texture, a delicate taste, and little salt.

Weir notes that Bayonne ham is sometimes called French prosciutto. She adds, "It is rich with hints of hazelnut adding an earthiness that lingers on the palate. Some producers rub the ham with Piment d'Espelette, a slightly hot and spicy Basque red pepper powder, which adds a touch of heat to the finished jambon. It has a rich red color, is slightly sweet, and very lightly salted as compared to prosciutto.

It is aged for 9 to 12 months and the end product is meltingly moist. In the U. Instead, the producers about 27 scattered throughout the region procure their hams from freshly slaughtered locally raised pigs at the end of the fall, and salt-cure them with coarse sea salt and a mixture of herbs—the mixture varies from producer to producer, and the producers keep their formulas secret, passing them on only to the heirs who will continue the family business, but generally, the mixture contains black pepper , red pepper, garlic, juniper berries , and a little sugar.

Finally, the speck hams are hung to air-dry in a cool place for four to five months. When the speck is ready; the producer cleans it and sends it to market; by comparison with prosciutto , the lean meat part of speck is a darker, richer red, tending towards a dark ruby color, while the fat is white to pale pink.

In terms of texture and flavor, speck is a bit firmer than Parma or San Daniele prosciutto and has pleasing smoky notes that mingle with the sweet-savory pork flavor of prosciutto. If you cannot find speck for a recipe that calls for it, you can substitute it with either pancetta ideally the flat, rather than rolled, variety , or slab bacon , preferably hickory-cured bacon containing the smallest amount of sugar possible.

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