Walk into any salumeria in Italy and the first thing you notice is the legs: whole hams hanging from the ceiling, each one stamped, dated and waiting. That quiet room is the entire answer to the question what is prosciutto. It is a pork leg, salted by hand and left to dry in moving air for many months — sometimes well over a year — until it becomes something sweet, silky and deeply savoury that no shortcut can imitate.
We are an olive oil family, not butchers. But prosciutto sits on our table as often as bread does, and it follows the same rules our oil does: one raw ingredient, minimal intervention, and time doing the real work.
What is prosciutto, exactly?
Prosciutto is simply the Italian word for ham. When Americans say it, they almost always mean prosciutto crudo — raw, dry-cured ham that is never cooked. Its cousin prosciutto cotto is a cooked ham, closer to a fine deli ham, and a different food entirely. On an Italian menu, the word on its own can mean either, so read the second word.
Crudo is safe to eat without cooking because of the curing itself. Salt draws out moisture, and long drying in controlled conditions leaves a ham too dry and too salty for spoilage organisms to thrive. It is one of the oldest preservation methods in Europe, and it still works exactly as it did centuries ago.
How prosciutto is made
1. Salting
Fresh rear legs are trimmed and rubbed with salt. Producers of the great protected hams use sea salt and nothing else — no nitrites, no smoke, no sugar. The leg rests cold while salt works inward.
2. Resting
The excess salt is removed and the hams rest for weeks in cool rooms so the salt can spread evenly through the meat. This is where the texture begins to change.
3. Drying and aging
The legs move to airy aging rooms. The exposed face is sealed with sugna, a paste of pork fat, salt and flour, so the surface does not dry faster than the interior. Then comes the long wait. Enzymes slowly break proteins and fats into the savoury, nutty, faintly sweet compounds that define a great slice. Masters test each ham with a horse-bone needle, smelling it to judge its progress.
Parma, San Daniele and the regional hams
Italy protects its best hams with DOP status (Protected Designation of Origin), the same system that governs certified olive oils — we explain it in our guide to DOP and IGP certifications.
- Prosciutto di Parma DOP — from the hills around Parma in Emilia-Romagna. Salt only, aged at least a year, and branded with the ducal crown. Delicate, sweet, rosy.
- Prosciutto di San Daniele DOP — from Friuli in the northeast, cured with sea salt and recognisable by its guitar-like shape with the trotter left on. Often a touch sweeter and more buttery.
- Regional crudos — Tuscany, Umbria and the south make saltier, more assertive hams, sometimes rubbed with pepper or herbs.
Our own region, Calabria, is better known for other cured meats — capocollo, soppressata, pancetta and fiery ‘nduja — but the logic is identical: local pigs, salt, climate and a family that knows when to wait.
How to buy prosciutto
- Buy it sliced to order when you can. Pre-packed slices are fine, but fresh-cut prosciutto is noticeably more aromatic.
- Ask for it paper-thin, almost translucent. Thick prosciutto is chewy and aggressively salty.
- Look for the fat. The white band is not waste; it carries most of the aroma. Eat it.
- Check the origin mark on the rind or pack. A named origin and a stamp tell you more than any adjective.
How to serve prosciutto
Take it out of the fridge 20 to 30 minutes before eating. Cold fat tastes of nothing; at room temperature it turns glossy and sweet. Drape the slices loosely instead of stacking them flat so they do not fuse together.
Classic pairings
- Melon or ripe figs — sweetness against salt, the oldest trick on the Italian table.
- Burrata — cream against cure. Our guide to what burrata is covers how to choose a good one.
- Warm bread and good oil — toast a slice of country bread, pour on a thread of peppery extra virgin olive oil, lay prosciutto over the top while the bread is still warm. The fat softens, the oil lifts it. This is our house antipasto.
- Pasta — added at the very end, off the heat, so it stays tender rather than frying into chips.
Why good olive oil matters on the board
Prosciutto is all nuance: sweet fat, salt, a long nutty finish. A flat, stale or refined oil adds nothing but grease. A fresh, early-harvest extra virgin brings green, grassy aromatics and a peppery catch that cuts the richness and makes the ham taste sweeter. That peppery note comes from polyphenols — compounds that only survive in genuinely fresh, well-made oil, as we explain on our polyphenols page.
It is the same principle as a great ham: honest raw material, handled carefully, served close to its best. Our oil comes from one family estate in Calabria, pressed within hours of picking and traceable to the grove — the reasoning is on our single-source page.
The short answer
Prosciutto is Italian dry-cured ham: a pork leg, salt and many months of air. Buy it thin, serve it warm, eat the fat, and put it next to bread and an olive oil that deserves the company.
Build a better board. Explore our single-estate Italian extra virgin olive oils and taste what a grove-to-bottle oil does next to a slice of real prosciutto.
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