Remember just two words: BELLOTA IBERICA 🍗🍗
And also this: good jamón starts at €17 per 100 g.
Very briefly about jamón.
Jamón is a dry-cured whole pork hind leg.
There are two main types of Spanish jamón:
Serrano
Ibérico
In Ukraine, you’ll mostly find “Serrano Cebo” on sale. But to be honest, that’s not quite the divine jamón you absolutely must try. Serrano is simply well-cured meat from an ordinary white domestic pig — just not a Ukrainian one, but a Spanish one, raised in captivity and fed regular feed, i.e. cebo.
What we really want is true Ibérico jamón — and not just that, but BELLOTA (Spanish for “acorns”), and ideally with at least 50%, or better yet 100%, bellota.
Let me decode the name in one sentence:
Jamón de bellota Ibérico 100% is a dry-cured ham, or hind leg, from small black semi-wild Iberian pigs that are considered a national treasure of Spain. They are free-range (like those happy hens that lay the best eggs) and graze not just anywhere, but in the Jabugo natural park (de Jabugo) in southern Andalusia, eating nothing but acorns and fragrant mountain herbs, which give the meat its characteristic nutty flavour.
I’d even add “to the sound of Mozart”, like Swiss dairy cows, but unfortunately Spanish black wild pigs don’t quite live a classical lifestyle))
Anyway, here’s what I can tell you: the first time I tried Bellota Ibérico 100% jamón in Barcelona — even from a supermarket — and forgive the details, but the hotel trash bin kept a nutty, acorny aroma from the empty packaging for two more days.
Can you bring a whole leg of jamón back from Spain? I can’t say about a full leg — I’ve never transported that much)) But I have brought pre-sliced jamón in vacuum packs (which keeps for 1–2 months) several times to Poland and Budapest, and everything was fine. At home, with an ordinary knife, you simply won’t slice a leg the way it’s meant to be sliced — it’s an art in itself and requires a special stand. In vacuum packs, sliced jamón keeps well for up to 1–2 months.
You could easily give a several-hour lecture on jamón — but it’s much better to go to Spain for a proper jamón tasting with 🍷🍷 red Spanish wines from the Rioja region. Wrote that down?
Now you’ll want to try real jamón too — so that every time you bring it back home from Spain, you catch yourself thinking: “I just hope it survives the trip, otherwise my suitcase will perfume the whole cargo hold.”
And I’ve always managed to get it home safely))
