San Daniele is a small town in Friuli Venezia Giulia,region in north-eastern Italy, with important monuments dating back to the Middle Age to 1700 and an excellence above all: Prosciutto Crudo DOP (raw ham with Protected Denomination of Origin) known and appreciated all over the world.
It’s one of the best symbols of made in Italy and you can recogniseit by sweet and delicate smell and taste.
But San Daniele is not only a raw ham but it’s also a culture, a tradition handed down through the centuries.
Thanks to its low-fat meat, noble proteins, B1, B6, PP vitamins and minerals like phosphorus, zinc and potassium, it’s perfect for all people: children, elderly ones, sportsmen and people who follow a slimming-diet.
Whether you have it as a quick starter or you use it to give taste to other dishes, San Daniele DOP ham surely is the protagonist in the kitchen.
Today, it’s produced by 31 factories organized in a pool which operates according to rigorous rules called “Production Disciplinare”, which provides many steps and implicates many people: farmers, slaughteres and slicing factories.
The first step is the meat choise, as the producers tell us. San Daniele raw ham is esclusively made from pigs meats that were born, grown up and butchered in Italy. Pigs are feed in a controlled-diet by whey and noble cereals.
A very important step is the salting process: pigs legs are covered in sea salt and then they have to seat in a temperature between 0 and 4 degrees celsius.
The next step is the pressing, useful to let the salt be absorbed by legs meat and to give them the typical guitar shape.
Then the maturing step begins and after many controls on each piece, the raw ham is finally ready. Each piece needs almost 13 months to become a good and famous San Daniele ham DOP.
During this time, the meats are maintained in an optimal temperature condition, humidity and ventilation. To evaluate at which step the seasoning is, every leg is pinched with a characteristic horse bone, which allows to smell the perfume and the taste through the nose.
The latest steps are the authentication and the branding which includes the producer’s code and assures ham quality, making it perfectly recognizable also by the consumers.