How ham is made
Most supermarket ham is pork pumped full of curing brine with needles so it takes days instead of months.
- stations
- 6
- things upstream
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- raw sources
- 7
- steps from the ground
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The short version
Ham is pork leg preserved by curing with salt. Dry-cured hams are packed in salt and hung to dry for months or even years. The faster factory route pumps a brine of salt, sugar and nitrite into the meat through needles, then tumbles, cooks or smokes it. Nitrite stops bacteria growth and keeps the meat pink.
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Trim the leg
Pork legs are trimmed of surplus fat and skin and cleaned before curing.
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Pump in the brine
A curing solution of salt, nitrite, sugar and seasonings is pumped into the meat. This is faster than soaking, and it spreads salt evenly, usually in a few days.
Goes in -
Soak in the cure
The meat sits in brine or is tumbled so the cure reaches the middle. Brining by immersion takes around 3 to 14 days and increases the weight of the finished ham by about 4 percent.
3 to 14 days in brine
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Smoke or cook
Wet-cured hams are usually cooked, either during processing or after aging. Smoking may be added for flavor. Italian prosciutto cotto is first brined, then cooked in a container and surface-pasteurized.
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Chill and slice
Cooked hams are cooled and then sliced or sold whole.
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Or dry-cure the premium leg
The slow alternative covers the leg in salt, presses out fluid and hangs it in a dark, temperature-regulated room. Enzymes break muscle into peptides and amino acids, which build flavor. Nitrites are added with the salt in most modern dry cures.
9 to 12 months for jamon serrano
Goes in
Worth repeating
- Nitrites in ham stop bacterial growth and react with myoglobin to give cured meat its red color.
- Cato the Elder wrote about the salting of hams around 160 BC.
- Iberian ham can take up to 2 years to reach the desired flavor.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and ham starts as these 7 raw sources.
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How ham is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/ham