Jamon it, all right

The other day I went down to Fox & Obel, a gourmet grocery store at the corner of Illinois and McClurg in the River East neighborhood, just west of Navy Pier. I was looking for some serrano ham and Manchego cheese to make sandwiches with, since I've had sandwiches with those ingredients before and liked them, but they tend to be pretty expensive. As I was looking in the case at the variety of hams, one caught my eye: jamón ibérico de bellota. Specifically, what caught my eye was the price tag: $179.99 per pound.

After confirming that wasn't a misprint, I came home and did a little research. Jamón ibérico, ham from black Iberian pigs from the south of Spain, is the most expensive ham in the world, and the bellota is the cream of the crop. Bellota ham is made from pigs that eat nothing but acorns in southwest Spain's oak forests for the last months of their lives, giving the meat an intense marbling and a nutty taste (at least supposedly). I decided I had to try this ham.

So I went back with a coworker who had the idea to expand the thing to a three-way Spanish ham taste test. We'd start with the "basic" serrano ham (priced to move at a mere $26.99/lb), then move on to the standard ibérico ham (which retails at $89.99/lb), and finish with the bellota.

I had never before had serrano ham in isolation, outside of a sandwich and without the accompaniment of Manchego. The taste was sharp and fairly salty, but pleasant; I found something vaguely woodsy about it. The color of the meat was fairly light, and it could be a little tough to bite through depending on if I was biting the outside of the slice, which was surrounded by a ring of fat that got fairly thick on one end.

Next was the $89.99/lb ibérico. Already I could see a darker, richer color to the meat, and the marbling was noticeable (supposedly the second grade of ibérico, one down from bellota, is finished merely half on acorns and half on grain, so if this was that kind, it certainly makes sense). I tasted some nuttiness, and noted that it seemed lighter and less salty than the serrano (although it was certainly greasier). It tasted rather like a high-end cheese, in fact.

Finally came the pig de résistance. The bellota was perhaps even slightly darker than the regular ibérico, the marbling even more pronounced, the flecks of fat poking up from the paper-thin slices even more noticeable. The paper on which the ham sat peeled away, as the meat practically oozed oil. The tenderness was ridiculous - while the serrano could at times be difficult to chew, the bellota could be pulled into as many pieces as you wanted by hand, and even the biggest attachments of fat simply melted away in the mouth. I almost didn't even need to chew it. Perhaps owing to the 36-month curing process, the bellota seemed saltier again than the ibérico had been, but as I chewed, the saltiness began to fall away, and the ham presented a rich, earthy aftertaste. It seemed that I was tasting both the pig itself and the natural environment in which it had lived.

Jamón ibérico de bellota. Image found on Flickr.

Unquestionably, the bellota ham was the best. At the same time, it's difficult to argue that it's worth three bucks a slice - yeah - except to say you've tried it. And really, the regular ibérico was up there with it - while it clearly was not as superior, I can't say it was half as good, and since it costs half of what the bellota costs, if you're looking to splurge on a high-end ham, you might as well save yourself a bit of money and stick with the stuff that merely costs 90 bucks a pound (or $1.50 a slice). You have to be willing to eat the ham on its own, though; this stuff is too expensive and too complex to justify putting it with, well, anything really - maybe alternate bites with a piece of Manchego or Mahón or something, but that's about it. If you're just looking for a nice classy ham sandwich, serrano ham will do you just fine.