What is the big deal with Spanish Jamon? I appreciate it's been cured for years, but... Is it worth the $?
Spanish Jamon - how good is it?
Carson Sullivan
Isaac Sanders
It's only use is to impress foodies/hipsters
You can put minced slices of it on a bowl of cat diarrhea and people would eat it up and rave about it
Asher Taylor
Fuck yes
Christopher Howard
>$
Virtually no authentic Spanish ham can be had in the US thanks to import laws. They were forcing importers to cut the hooves off not long ago, which makes it difficult to check that you're getting the real deal, and there was talk of them imposing a 100% tax on them because the EU won't allow imports of hormone-riddled bargain-basement US beef.
>is it worth it
Yes, without a doubt. Proper iberico de bellota is a ham like no other. has never tasted it and no doubt subsits on a diet of chicken tendies and instant ramen.
Joseph Peterson
>Proper iberico de bellota is a ham like no other
I feel like when people say stuff like this, it's not true
I mean, sure there's a price to consider when buying it, but if it's not popular, can you really say it's an amazing thing?
I mean, mcdonald's tastes pretty good and even though it's popularity correlates with it's price, there are people who rave on about the wonders of mcdonald's fries
Why is iberico ham automatically better than mcdonald's fries?
Sebastian Mitchell
has never tasted it and no doubt subsits on a diet of chicken tendies and instant ramen.
Actually tonight I made a tomato creamed chicken fricassee; bitch
Luke Hughes
Oh, and the raw meat (which can not be had in the US unless you smuggle it in) is incredible. Deep red and rich in flavour, you cook it like you would a steak and serve it medium rare. It's as meltingly delicious as proper wagyu, but with a nutty, porky flavour.
Grayson Cook
It costs a lot because they're low-yield pigs that are kept at just two to a hectare on a diet of acorns, and take two years to grow, plus another three for the meat to cure. McDonald's does a good chip though, they actually use pretty much the same cooking method employed by Heston and other top chefs (water bath, fry once, freeze, then fry again). Tasty food doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg, but if you can afford it iberico ham is the superlative cured meat, no other ham compares.
>tomato creamed chicken fricassee
Kek.
Alexander Price
Is this the cover of a Carol J. Adams book?
Anthony Cook
>Kek.
Enlighten me on what is so funny
Landon Bell
The idea that cooking a chicken oven bake gives you the power to declare that a food that you've never tasted is overrated.
Cooper Gomez
whenever you are forced to believe the bullshit the vendor tells you, and if you lack the baseline to distinguish between good or bad, it is easy to feel ripped off, partly because you probably are getting ripped off.
I live in europe and ive travelled a lot, so i can say with confidence, that like with every other fooditem, there are very good ones and very bad ones, and the price doesnt necesseraly reflect that. I had pata negra in portugal for 4$/100g that was utterly amazing, a good serrano ham is nuttier and stronger tasting than most hams youve ever had, a lot of italian hams are also awesome - BUT theres also a lot of overpriced shit floating around.
I run into the problem with buying high quality tea in europe -
>can you get it, maybe
>will it be what the vendor claims, probably not
>will you overpay, yes
tldr: a "spanish ham" says as much as "oolong" or "french cheese", you only know quality once you can compare, and til you can compare spanish hams in the us, you will pay a lot of tuition
Wyatt Lee
"Jamón" translates to "ham."
Calling it jamón while speaking English is incredibly pretentious. Just call it Spanish ham.
Lucas Howard
It's not pretentious if OP is referring to something specific, which he is.
Camden Hernandez
Umm did you just post that McDonald's uses
>the same technique that other top chefs do?
Is this the next 'go 'za? Are you just trolling? Mcdolans also does not fry, they microwave.
Caleb Clark
>they microwave
Have you ever been in a McDonald's? Here's a slideshow of the process:
Aside from some of the chemical shit they add, it's pretty close to this:
>en.wikipedia.org
Think of it as being like covergent evolution - two sets of people both looking for the perfect fried potato, one of them coming at it from a fine-dining perspective, the other from an industrial perspective, and both arriving at the same conclusion.
Dominic Nelson
Can confirm. Iberico de bellota is indeed best ham. I'm lucky enough to live 5 mins from a great charcuterie that stocks it.
I didn't know Americans didn't have this though, and they call themselves the land of the free.
Noah Fisher
The better grades of Spanish ham are the best I've ever tasted. Easily a step above the best Italian stuff I've had, and I've hung in both countries.
Aaron Brooks
Of course America has this.
I just had some Iberico ham at a tapas place last night. Plus, there's several meat markets near me that stock it. Obviously, if you live in a rural area it will be much harder to come by, and even harder in the severe flyover areas, but that's common in a large country like the US.
Cameron Butler
The challenge in the US is getting your hands on the good stuff. You have to know who is importing what. Near me it's much easier to find decent quality Italian ham than Spanish. But a short trip can get me to a place where I can get some decent Spanish stuff.
The real issue is standards. The US produces domestic ham, and can put whatever name they want on it. Most of it is low end stuff, and should be avoided. And imported is no assurance of quality, because we import a lot of low end stuff as well. It's like wine here - you can't go by the name, you have to educate yourself to know what you're getting. Fortunately once you've had the good stuff it's not that hard to taste the difference between that and the low end.
Bentley Jackson
Be warned - there is no law in America that would prevent people passing off any old shit as iberico ham. Something that has been reared and aged in the US is not iberico, no matter what label the producer may stick on it. On top of that, the rules on import are extremely tight and only a handful of suppliers pass them (it's good old-fashioned protectionism of the American pork industry). The real stuff will run you at least a few hundred dollars per pound, anything less than that and it's likely to be fake.
Jeremiah James
Yes, Genuine Spanish jamon is fucking amazing. However, the under-educated shitposters talking smack about American meat need to check themselves. American beef is considered some of the best in the world. The quality of our animals is without question, the issue is how we treat it after it's dead. Our beef has to be slaughtered before it's even 3 years old. We can only age it so long. Conditions have to be *just so*. This incentivizes younger, less flavourful, more rapid turn around animals fattened on grains. The laws exist to protect us from unscrupulous vendors who would just sell fucking garbage and filler back in the days before the FDA though.
Our laws definitely need reform and re-adjustment, but American food products aren't low quality. Our process however, is.
Also friendly reminder a few years ago a bunch of horsemeat did the rounds in the Euro beef supply.
Tyler Walker
Jamon has nothing to do with beef. You're mixing up piggy and moo moo.
Wyatt Perry
Veeky Forums in a nutshell
You forgot to add something about "apologizing to shitskins" though
Easton Ramirez
>The challenge in the US is getting your hands on the good stuff.
What a fucking meme.
The "challenge" with everything that is expensive and secretly total shit - is that it is always because we just haven't quite managed to get our hands on the good stuff.
It's a fucking bullshit romantic fantasy about a different land with better things.
The whole fucking story is always crap.
>Italian 'za is the best.
>Mexican food isn't mexican unless its made in mexico.
>You can't get lobster anywhere else in the world besides Maine.
>swissChocolate
>FrenchFaguettes
>ViennaSnausages
Its all fucking lies. The worst fucking meat I've ever put in my mouth was fucking pig meat in spain.
Angel Edwards
Who is this meat treat
Levi Peterson
Pretty sure it's the 5.2 diet chick
Ryder Nelson
If you're eating it off a plate with only a little bread maybe, perhaps toasted and rubbed with garlic and then a tomato; in that case you wanna eat ibérico. Otherwise you can use whatever you want.