Painstaking prosciutto

Daniele hams are sourced from heritage breed hogs, including Berkshire and Duroc, each weighing between 28 lbs. and 32 lbs. when they arrive at the plant. After the months-long curing process, deboning and skinning, the final ham weight is typically about 12 lbs.

Hams are minimally trimmed by hand before being weighed, tagged and sorted into small, medium and large sizes. Robots move the incoming hams onto the shelves of tall racks according to size (small, medium, large) until they are ready for salting, usually about a day later. The cut portion of the ham, or “face,” is the part of the ham where the salt is absorbed, but salt is applied to the skin-on parts of the ham as well, serving as an abrasive to clean the surface and ensure a uniform appearance. Each ham is salted and held for one week before being desalted, massaged and salted again and held for an additional week. Hams are held in salting rooms where the humidity level is elevated to ensure absorption of the salt. Even the salting, desalting and massaging steps at Daniele are automated, as is the robotic transporting of the hams throughout this process.

During a stop in one of the two salting rooms, Stefano stops talking mid-sentence. “You can actually hear it,” he says, cocking his head to focus on the quiet ticking and dripping sound of the salt penetrating the hams. He also points out that this is the extent of the ingredients used to make the prosciutto. “Salt and that’s it,” he says.

After the salting process the meat color begins to transform from pinkish-red to a brown tint.

During the first three to four months of the life of the ham used to make prosciutto, a colder environment is required to prevent spoiling. During this time, the salt that was applied to the surface is absorbed all the way to the bone of the ham. The ham’s level of shrinking is a visual cue that the salt has reached the bone and that spoiling cannot occur.

At the end of the cold phase, hams are moved to what Stefano compares to a giant, vertical car wash, to rinse the salt off of the hams with water and bring them out of hibernation. “After so many months of a cool environment, the hams tend to tighten up,” he says. “So, you wash them to loosen up the muscle again to continue drying.”

Towering racks of hanging prosciutto are packed into specific aging rooms, each rack holding hundreds of hams that have been aging for 10 to 14 months. During those months, the products are moved to rooms that simulate the climates in southern Europe. This is part of the history of prosciutto production, Stefano says. “Originally, you couldn’t dry cure in Germany; you can’t do it somewhere like the Czech Republic because it’s just too cold.”

After about four or five months of curing, the surface of the hams becomes dry. To ensure the exchange of moisture into and out of the ham is maintained through the face, a process of “greasing” the hams with a brushed-on mixture of lard and spices ensures the surface remains permeable, allowing for continued moisture exchange.

When the drying and curing process is complete, the hams are deboned and trimmed by hand, and smaller chunks of it are combined in another automated process that presses them to form long bricks, which are designed for high-speed slicing. Currently, the Pascoag plant houses 11 slicing lines in addition to seven other lines at its two legacy plants.