Most of us have eaten a slice of prosciutto at some point in our lives. Cured Italian hams have long been available to the masses in the UK and beyond – supermarkets offer multiple a wide range of different hams these days, and they’ll even turn in up your run-of-the-mill lunchtime sandwich if you let them – but like so many artisan products, there exists a spectrum of quality that we don’t often consider.
When it comes to who make the best prosciutto crudo in Italy, there are normally two suitors to the crown – Prosciutto di Parma (commonly known as Parma ham) form Emilia Romagna and Prosciutto di San Daniele from the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Whilst your average leg of cured ham is made using roughly the same process as these two speciality hams, Parma and San Daniele ham are both DOP-protected, meaning that they must be made via very specific traditional rules and regulations. There are lots of other DOP-protected hams of course, but those made in Parma and San Daniele are certainly the most popular and generally regarded as the highest quality.
Whilst Parma ham is made in quite large quantities and over the significant geographical area of Parma to support demand in Italy and abroad, San Daniele is made in much smaller volume – there are around six times as many producers of Prosciutto di Parma as there are of San Daniele, and the latter is only made in the 8,000-strong town of San Daniele itself.
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Prosciutto di San Daniele DOP: king of the hams