Prosciutto Toscano

Prosciutto Toscano is a whole pork leg from Italian heavy pigs, dry-salted, rubbed with pepper and aromatics, and aged for at least ten to twelve months depending on size. It has carried DOP protection since 1996, and the production zone is the entire region of Tuscany.

Among the great Italian dry-cured hams it is the most assertive, for two technical reasons. First, salt: the salting phase runs longer and harder than in Parma, and the finished ham carries a noticeably higher salt content. Second, the concia: a rub of ground black pepper, garlic and natural aromatics such as juniper, bay and rosemary, worked into the surface during salting. No other Italian DOP ham is seasoned this way.

You can identify it before tasting, by the trim. Fat and rind are cut away in a high arc that exposes far more lean muscle than the Parma or San Daniele trim does. The resulting shape is narrower and sharper, and the exposed muscle is later sealed with sugna, a paste of lard, flour, salt and, in Tuscany, pepper.

Finished weight runs eight to ten kilos. One clarification worth having: prosciutto made from Cinta Senese pigs is not Prosciutto Toscano DOP. Cinta Senese is a separate native breed with its own protection, its own flavour and a much higher price.

Salty and savoury in a way Parma is not, with a herbal, peppery lift on the finish. The meat itself is dense and slightly chewy rather than silky, and the flavour is more mineral, more animal, closer to a Spanish serrano than to the sweet, buttery register English speakers usually associate with the word prosciutto.

The concia is what people remember. Pepper is the loudest note, with garlic sitting behind it and herbs (juniper, bay, rosemary) appearing more as a green undertone than as identifiable flavours. Along the rim of a slice you will often see pepper grains embedded in the fat.

On its own, it can read as aggressive. Eaten as intended, on Tuscan saltless bread or with melon or figs, it snaps into balance, and the fruit or bread stops the salt in exactly the way plain crackers do not. Long-aged pieces, sixteen months and up, taste nuttier and drier, and often show white tyrosine crystals that crunch faintly.

Cut it by knife, two to three millimetres thick, and let the slices be slightly uneven. This is Tuscan practice and it is also sound: a ham this savoury turns into pure salt when shaved paper-thin, while a slice with body keeps the sweetness of the meat underneath.

The bread should be unsalted. Tuscan pane sciocco or plain schiacciata is the accompaniment the product was designed around; on salted bread or crackers it reads as too much, which is a mismatch rather than a fault. If you cannot find unsalted bread, a good sourdough with a light hand on the salt is the nearest thing.

It beats Parma with melon and figs, because the salt holds up against sweet fruit instead of disappearing into it. In the kitchen, dice it into a meat ragù or a bean soup, and keep the knuckle end, the gambuccio, to flavour ribollita and any pot of Tuscan beans.

Do not trim the fat off. That is where the pepper, garlic and herbs live, and a defatted slice loses the thing that makes the ham Tuscan.

A whole bone-in ham, once started, keeps in a cool room at 10 to 15°C (50 to 59°F), the cut face covered with its own fat or with greaseproof paper, out of direct light, and is normally worked through over a couple of months. Between sessions that face dries and darkens, so a thin dry veil gets shaved off each time you come back to it.

Boned and vacuum packed, it carries a printed date and usually runs around six months refrigerated. Once opened, wrap it in a cloth and expect to work through it in three or four weeks, with the exposed surface hardening as you go.

Sliced is the fragile form: it oxidises within hours and loses much of its aroma inside a day. Buy small amounts and let them sit out twenty minutes, because cold keeps the fat waxy and mutes the pepper. Freezing breaks the fat structure and the meat thaws grainy. White specks on a slice are tyrosine crystals, formed as proteins break down over a long cure.

The mark branded into the rind is the only real guarantee: it carries the consortium stamp identifying Prosciutto Toscano DOP. Without it, a ham described as Tuscan is simply one made or packed in Tuscany, and could be anything.

The shape is sharper than Parma, trimmed high in an arc, with little covering fat visible on the muscle side. What fat there is should be white and firm, with no yellowing. Sliced, the colour runs from bright pink to red, darker than Parma because of the salt and the length of the cure, and grains of pepper from the rub are often visible along the edge. The texture is firm without being hard: a slice should fold rather than snap. The nose is cured meat first, then pepper, then a green note of garlic and herbs underneath.

At a counter abroad the neighbours are Parma and San Daniele, both sweeter, paler and softer, and Spanish serrano, drier and leaner. Toscano is the salty, peppery, herb-rubbed one, and it usually sits a step below Parma in price.

In the US, Italian delis and online specialists carry it sliced and vacuum-packed at roughly 24 to 38 dollars per pound; some Whole Foods and Wegmans counters stock it. In the UK, Italian delicatessens and a few of the larger supermarkets carry it at 32 to 48 pounds per kilo.

Check the label for Prosciutto Toscano DOP and, on a whole leg, for the fire-branded consortium mark on the rind. A ham described only as 'Tuscan-style' or 'produced in Tuscany' carries no rules about salting, seasoning or ageing.

Buy small quantities and eat them fast: sliced prosciutto oxidises within hours and loses most of its aroma within a day. If you are buying a boneless vacuum-packed piece, it will keep six months unopened and a month or so after that, which is usually the better value.

The Chianti hills between Greve and Panzano, half an hour south of Florence, where the historic butchers double as counters and kitchens. It is the easiest place in Tuscany to taste ham, finocchiona and pecorino side by side.

The Casentino and the Mugello, the two valleys north of Arezzo and Florence, are quieter and closer to the source, as is the Garfagnana above Lucca: all three have deep pork-butchery traditions and a fraction of the visitors. San Miniato, between Florence and Pisa, combines cured meats with its white truffle market in November.

On Monte Amiata and in the Val d'Orcia the ham arrives on the board next to Pienza pecorino. Wherever you eat in the region, the bread on the table will be unsalted, and that is the whole point, and it is worth ordering the ham specifically to eat with it.