Prosciutto di San Daniele

Prosciutto di San Daniele is a dry-cured ham produced exclusively within the town limits of San Daniele del Friuli, in the province of Udine. Not the region, not the province: the municipality, about thirty-five square kilometres, with roughly thirty producers.

The ingredient list is two lines long: legs from heavy Italian pigs, and sea salt. No preservatives, no nitrites, no smoke, no spices. Everything else is time and air.

The shape is the first thing you notice. It is called a chitarra, guitar-shaped, because pressing widens the leg at the base and narrows it at the top, and the trotter is left on. No other major Italian ham keeps the foot.

The rules require a minimum of thirteen months of ageing from salting, against twelve for Parma, and a finished weight of at least eight kilos. The fire-branded mark, a stylised ham outline with the letters SD, is applied only after an independent inspector has passed the piece.

Sweet, delicate and buttery, with far less salt than most people expect from cured ham. The first taste is milk and hazelnut rather than salt; the salt arrives late and never dominates.

The fat is the point. It is soft enough to melt on the tongue at body temperature, which is why a slice should be brought to room temperature before eating, and why a slice eaten cold from the fridge tastes like a different, duller product.

Against Parma, San Daniele reads as rounder and moister, with a slightly more marked sweetness and a shorter, cleaner finish. Against Spanish serrano it is softer, less salty and much less chewy.

A well-aged piece has small white specks in the lean. These are tyrosine crystals, an amino acid that forms during long curing. They are a sign of quality and they give a faint crunch.

Eat it raw, and eat it soon after it is cut. Slices lose their aroma within hours, which is why Italian shops slice to order and why vacuum packs are a compromise.

Take it out of the fridge twenty minutes before serving. Cold fat does not melt on the tongue, and the whole character of the ham depends on that.

In Friuli it is eaten with plain white bread, with Montasio cheese, and with figs in summer. Melon is the national cliche and works better with saltier hams; with something as sweet as San Daniele, figs, pears or a squeeze of nothing at all suit it better.

Cooking it is a waste of money, but if it goes near heat, let the heat come to it: draped over a pizza after the oven, laid on hot pumpkin soup, wrapped around grissini. The offcuts near the bone, which a good shop will often hand over cheaply, are excellent diced into a risotto, a frittata or a pasta sauce.

A note on slicing: the correct slice is thin enough to be almost translucent but still able to hold together when lifted. If it tears, it is too thin.

A whole bone-in leg does not belong in the fridge. It hangs, or sits on a stand, in a cool ventilated room between 12 and 18 °C, which is what it has been doing for the previous thirteen months. Once you start cutting, cover the open face with its own trimmed fat, a cloth or the slice of fat kept back for the purpose, and work through the leg over a month or two. The cut face dries and darkens whenever it is left bare, and that dried layer gets pared away before the next session.

Boneless vacuum packs live in the fridge and hold to the date printed on them. Opened, wrap them in greaseproof paper or a cloth and reckon on about two weeks, across which the exposed surface stiffens and the colour deepens. Slices cut at a counter are the fragile form and lose their aroma within hours, so buy small amounts. Freezing slices is the thing to skip: the fat crystallises and the slice flakes apart and weeps as it thaws.

The trotter left on the end is the quickest tell, and it is not decoration: it helps liquid drain during curing and the rules require it, so a whole leg sold as San Daniele without one is not San Daniele. On the skin sits a fire brand with the stylised ham outline, the letters SD and a producer code, and packs of slices carry the Consorzio logo next to the European DOP symbol. The leg is pressed flat into the shape people compare to a guitar, which is how it reads differently from a Parma on the same counter.

A slice is pink-red with fine white marbling, and the covering fat is pure white and firm, a couple of centimetres at most; yellow or soft fat says something about how it was kept. The smell is sweet and faintly buttery. Cut properly the slice is thin but not transparent and holds its own shape when lifted. White specks in the meat are tyrosine crystals from long ageing. Anything priced near domestic prosciutto-style ham is domestic prosciutto-style ham.

In the US, San Daniele is widely available: Eataly, Di Bruno Bros, Whole Foods and most Italian delis carry it whole, boned or pre-sliced, and the Consortium has been exporting to the American market for decades. Expect roughly 25 to 40 dollars per pound sliced at a counter, and more for pre-packed trays.

In the UK, supermarkets carry sliced San Daniele alongside Parma, and Italian delicatessens and online specialists sell boned pieces. Prices run about 40 to 60 pounds per kilo sliced.

Look for the branded mark on the rind, the stylised ham outline with SD, and the blue-and-yellow EU PDO symbol on packaging. If you are buying a whole ham, the trotter must be there.

Buy sliced to order where you can. Ask for it thin but not shredded, laid flat on paper rather than piled, and buy only what you will eat within a day.

One caution on labels: "San Daniele style" or "prosciutto crudo" without the protected name is a different, cheaper product. The name itself is the guarantee.

San Daniele del Friuli has a density of prosciutterie found nowhere else: small rooms where you order a plate of ham cut to order, a glass of Friulano and nothing else. Several producers run guided tours of their curing halls, ending in a tasting.

Aria di Festa, at the end of June, is the Consortium's festival: four days when the curing houses open their doors and the whole town becomes one long tasting counter.

The surrounding hills fill in the rest of the picture: Montasio cheese from the cooperative dairies, the white wines of the Colli Orientali between Buttrio and Cividale, frico and mountain cheese as you climb towards Carnia.

In Udine, twenty-five kilometres away, the osterie of the old centre serve San Daniele as a tajut, the Friulian half-glass of wine with something to eat, taken standing at the bar in the middle of the afternoon.