Acorn Fed lberico Ham
By Juan Vicente Olmos — July 31, 2024
5 MIN READ
This article is featured in the Magazine “Exploring Origin – The Importance of Knowing Where Food Comes From”, created in collaboration with Global Retail Brands. You can find more insights about the Magazine and additional articles here.
The history of the iberico pig and the “Montanera”
The “montanera” is the period in which the Iberian pig is fattened on acorns, grass, and natural resources of the pasture to reach its final weight before slaughter. During this time — at least 60 days — the animal must gain at least 46 kg and reach a final weight of over 138 kg.
It may be another of the many fortunate coincidences that come together to produce the wonderful Iberian acorn-fed ham, but the truth is that the weather aligns with the maturation of the acorns, which coincides with the propitious moment for the pig’s traditional slaughter. In the winter, until a few years ago before the invention of artificial refrigeration, the only viable way to safeguard the pig’s meat was to slaughter it at the beginning of winter to take advantage of the season’s cold to conserve the meat and its products.
The result is a finished animal, as they say: well fed and with all its fattening potential culminated. Its meat and bacon have also captured all the flavor of the pasture, the antioxidants of the grass, the oleic acid of the acorn, and so many other aromatic compounds that have integrated into its bouquet.
Fattening pigs on the Iberian Peninsula
Today this fattening system practically exists only in the Iberian Peninsula. Still, it has historically been the most common and rational way of exploiting the pig’s adipogenic capacity and the natural resources to which this animal is naturally adapted. Throughout Europe, there are references to this system of grazing, in which the main fruits of the autumn trees — acorns, chestnuts, and beechnuts, for example — are used.
Deforestation in Europe has intensified in recent centuries for different reasons in each epoch: from mining and fuel needed for the extraction of metals, in Roman times and earlier; to the construction of ships for the great Spanish Armada and to everyday activities such as the construction of houses or fire for heating and cooking. In the 18th century, with the agricultural and industrial revolution, deforestation intensified as the production of grain and other crops multiplied. All these factors forced the pig farmer to take pigs out of their environment and into stables, and change the pig’s natural fattening in the forest with natural resources, for feeding in stables with cultivated food.
This paradigm shift caused important modifications in local pig breeds — and most disappeared altogether. Faced with the need to make pig breeding profitable, now that food has to be provided to pigs rather than foraged for themselves, the animal’s efficiency and speed in fattening and producing large numbers of piglets has become more important.
The peninsula’s prized pigs
Thus began the formation of the new European pig breeds, with a large contribution of blood of Chinese origin that provided the crossbreeds with greater prolificacy and precocity in their maturation and consequent fattening. These animals were also more adapted to breeding in stables and would no longer have thrived in the natural conditions of the forest.
After different historical periods, in which fat production was initially prioritized but later penalized, breeds continued to evolve into what we see today: pigs capable of reaching weights over 100 kg within a few months and with hardly any fat on their bodies.
But in the Iberian Peninsula, and specifically in its southwest, there remains a small redoubt in which we still find an ancient, rustic, and extremely fatty pig: the Iberian pig, which is fattened in the dehesa, an anthropic forest characteristic of this region, one that aspires to be declared a cultural landscape by UNESCO. Its main fruit is the acorn, which has a high energy content and low protein levels, a nutrient that the animal will compensate for in part by consuming grass and other natural resources.
The survival of this type of ecosystem in our peninsula is due to various reasons including the quality of the soil, the 13th century reconquest of these lands, and the quality of the acorns produced by these trees, which are much sweeter and more appetizing than in the rest of Europe. But ultimately, it’s the quality of the meat products obtained, especially Iberian acorn-fed ham, that has allowed these unique systems to be maintained in the Iberian Peninsula.
The pig’s flavor profile
From the Iberian pork and the elements of the dehesa ecosystem, we obtain the raw material. After minimal processing and up to years of maturation and curing, this raw material gives rise to the gastronomic marvel that is Iberian acorn-fed ham. The slices boast a bright, almost crimson red color, sometimes softened by the white streaks of infiltrated fat.</p
At room temperature, this fat lends a shine and fluidity in the mouth, which is further intensified by the rapid salivation produced by exciting the taste buds with just the right amount of salt and a multitude of sapid molecules. The pleasant texture is consistent but not hard, with no sensation of wetness but a fluidity that becomes livelier with each bite — keeping us salivating. The powerful aromas, with tones of slightly aged, cured fat, are pleasant and intense, softened by sweet nuances of certain amino acids, slowly released during maturation. All this is wrapped in the oiliness of the oleic acid and dozens of volatiles that together give the ham that exquisite persistence in the mouth.
Share on
