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How To Make Prosciutto in Your Garage

• by Laura, March 13, 2009

Here.  Want a taste of prosciutto? 

Nancy and I took a photo field trip recently to visit my friend Lou who personally cures his own pig leg and turns it into prosciutto as good as anything I’ve had in Italy. 

For those of you who have read my book or followed this blog, you know which Lou I’m talking about. Lou the mentor and pasta maker.  Lou the cooking hero.  Lou the nothing-is-too-hard-for-me-to-conquer in the kitchen--yes, that guy.  Here we are in his garage.  Though I prefer the term outbuilding because there are no cars here, only a smoker, and curing meat, and garden or carpentry projects….  Sort of like Appalachia.  Or…. Saint Agata. 

Ah Saint Agata....  Say hello to Lou’s cousin just outside Naples.  What’s she got over her head?  Those are prosciutti, covered in netting to keep away flies. This photo was taken by Lou’s brother Joseph on their visit in the late 1990s to the emerald green village of his clan.  I am certain it worked in his mind for years.  If they could do it, why couldn’t he?  He figured out how to make fresh sausage long ago, and then later dry cured soprassata and capicola. 

But prosciutto—that was his Everest.

This past winter, we celebrated his success.  Here is his baby, shot by Nancy, in Lou’s wine cellar here—a small temperature controlled room he built in his basement. 

With one successful first batch behind him (the process took a full year), he started another batch.  So we’re going to track his (er… his ham’s) progress for you here on Jellypress.

It began in February with two 25 pound legs.  These are going to take more than a year to cure.  And they’ll need a lot of salt to draw out the liquid.  Last year Lou put all kinds of weights on them to help press out the liquid.  But this year, he devised a new system using a crank machine normally used for pressing wine from grapes.  He’s very pleased.

He flips the ham over every couple of days and turns the winch just little tighter.  Quite rapidly, the ham gets so flat, it’s hard to believe.  Soon, there is no more blood running off.  It stays pressed in salt for more than 2 weeks. 

Okay, that’s enough for now.  We’ll return here soon.  In the meantime, let’s go back into the kitchen for a taste last year’s batch.

Oh and have a taste of soprassata too. 

Here’s to enough salty spicy sweet pork to last a very long time.  And here’s the Lou and his cousin in Saint Agata.

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