Cured Meats

Dry-cured meats are hams, loins and sausages preserved with salt and slow drying rather than cooking, such as Spanish jamón, lomo and chorizo, and they are eaten as they are, sliced thin.

How to choose Cured Meats

  • Seal color. Spain's Ibérico rules tag every leg: black for acorn-fed 100 percent Ibérico, red for acorn-fed Ibérico crosses, green for pigs raised outdoors on feed, and white for farm-raised pigs on feed.
  • Bellota or cebo. Bellota pigs finish on acorns during the montanera, the October to March acorn season in the oak pastures. Cebo pigs eat mainly grain and legumes.
  • Serrano or Ibérico. Serrano ham is cured for at least 210 days, about seven months. Ibérico ham needs at least 600 days, or 730 for legs of 7 kilograms or more.

About Cured Meats

Cured meats start with salt. Dry-cured hams are made by salting raw meat and drying it slowly until so little water is left that bacteria cannot multiply. For Spanish ham, the leg sits in salt for roughly a day per kilogram, rests while the salt spreads evenly, dries for months, and then ages in a cellar.

Dry sausages follow a similar path. Chopped meat is mixed with salt, curing agents and a lactic starter, stuffed into casings, fermented and air-dried until it weighs 60 to 80 percent of what it did. Spanish chorizo is seasoned with paprika. Pimentón de la Vera, from northern Cáceres in Extremadura, is the kind dried over oak smoke.

Pigs finished on acorns lay down a softer, oilier fat than pigs raised on feed, because the acorns change the makeup of the fat.

At a glance

Made from
Pork and salt; sausages add curing agents, paprika and spices
Label terms
Bellota, cebo de campo, cebo, 100% ibérico
Once opened
Refrigerate; dry sausage within 3 weeks

Cured Meats questions

Does a whole dry-cured ham need to be refrigerated?

Not while it is whole and uncut. Dry-cured hams hold so little water that bacteria cannot multiply, and a whole American country ham, a dry-cured kind, can sit at room temperature for up to a year, though quality slowly drops. Once you slice into it, the moister inside is exposed, so sliced dry-cured ham must be refrigerated.

Is the mold on the outside of a cured ham safe?

Usually, yes. Mold on the rind of a dry-cured ham is common and normally harmless, and Spain's Jabugo rules even describe a white or dark grayish blue surface mold as typical of a well-made piece. Scrub it off with a stiff vegetable brush before carving rather than throwing the ham away.

How long does dry sausage keep before and after opening?

A whole hard sausage such as salami keeps about six weeks in the pantry and indefinitely in the refrigerator. Once it is opened or cut, wrap it, refrigerate it and finish it within three weeks. For longer storage it can go in the freezer for one to two months.

Sources: Spain's Boletín Oficial del Estado, Ibérico quality standard; Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.

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