meat

“And if you don’t know, now you know.” -The Notorious B.I.G.

Culatello and Fiocco di Prosciutto (…plus the Rumpetto)

While most people like prosciutto, only those who really know, know of and enjoy culatello. Culatello is often referred to as the heart of the Prosciutto. It is created when you take the freshly cut rear leg of a pig and you remove the leg bones from it. In doing this, you create two whole muscle bundles of meat. The larger of these is the prized culatello di prosciutto while the smaller of the two is the fiocco di prosciutto, often passed off as the ugly step sibling of the culatello, but quite wrongly so. The culatello, while made from the same part of the pig as the prosciutto, has a much different flavor; earthy and sweet, a delicate balance of fat and meat that dissolves on your tongue.

The Meat

In order to butcher out the culatello and fiocco, you are going to need to understand a bit of the anatomy of the rear leg. Usually, you will receive a leg primal with part of the hip bone still attached. At the face of the meat, the hip bone articulates with the proximal end of the femur. The femur bone runs through the upper portion of the pig rear leg, the distal end of which articulates with the tibia and the patella to form the knee joint. Then, the tibia and the fibula run through the lower portion of the leg. It’s important to understand how these bones lie in the meat, in order to understand how we will need to remove them to get at the culatello and fiocco cleanly.

Once you have situated yourself, the first step is to skin the leg. You can either do this now, or wait until you have removed the aitch bone. Either way is fine. Do this carefully, making sure to leave on as much fat as possible. I’m still working on my skinning skills, so it takes me some time and effort to do this, but experts can do this in a few quick knife strokes.

Next, you want to remove the portion of the hip bone that articulates with the proximal end of the femur, commonly referred to as the aitch bone. You want to gently remove the aitch bone from the head of the femur, cutting any connective tissue between the two that you come across. This will become easier with practice, as you familiarize yourself with the shape of the bone and the way it protrudes into the meat. It is important to do this carefully, and not cut unnecessarily into the meat. Feel free to use your hands to feel around the bone and inform your cuts. Free the aitch bone entirely, and remove it from the leg.

When the aitch bone is removed from the leg, it should have as little meat on it as possible, meaning that your cuts were clean and efficient. Mine is not quite there, but with practice, makes perfect.

After you have removed the aitch bone, you should have what looks like an Italian style prosciutto leg, with the exposed ball joint at the face of the meat.

Similarly to making a prosciutto, what you want to do at this point is start to milk the femoral vein. After death, blood can pool in the venous system, even if the blood was drained during the slaughtering process. We want to eliminate all the blood from this piece of meat before we start curing, or it could negatively impact our end results. There are a number of videos and descriptions online of how to do this, but briefly, I attempt to trace the femoral vein through its course in the leg, starting at the distal end and working my way to the proximal face. I apply as much pressure as possible, and attempt to force blood out of the vein in this manner. It’s also important to note, this isn’t a process you can do only once. If you receive a leg that has been frozen, sometimes the blood will be frozen as well, and won’t drain on the day you are cutting. Its important to do this multiple times throughout the process, to make sure all the blood is really drained.

Finally, it’s time to do the thing that, if you’re experienced making prosciutto, seems sacrilegious; cutting into the leg. There are traditional ways to do this, but I’ve found a method that I prefer and that works for me. I prefer to cut straight down on top of the bone, and carefully extract it. As someone with less experience, this method helps me to make sure that I don’t commit any grievous errors. If you are more experienced, you can simply “know” where the bone runs, and cut the culatello off by feel.

Once I have exposed the bone and freed it from its attachments to the bundles of meat that are the culatello and fiocco, you have a few options for how you want to cut them out. I like this method, because by leaving both the culatello and fiocco attached, you gain a triangular shaped whole muscle at the face of the prosciutto.

I like to make the first cut across the leg, to trim up the faces of the culatello and fiocco, while simultaneously freeing this meat that I call the rumpetto. I like to cure this with spices and cold smoke it, in a modified version of speck. If you don’t save this muscle whole, you can use this extra meat for salami.

Once the face of the meat is trimmed, you can cut out the entire culatello and fiocco.

You want to trim the culatello into its characteristic teardrop shape. Once you have trimmed it up, you want to tie it using tight slip knots, to help it maintain its shape and make sure there are no air pockets created during the butchering process. And that’s it! You’ve shaped your culatello and fiocco.

Salting (4C/40F, 3 weeks+)

For the salting of culatello, I like to keep it simple. I do an equilibrium cure with salt, black pepper, and cure #2. Some people don’t use cure #2 for whole muscles like this, but I do. I generally cure both the culatello and fiocco in this simple cure, although sometimes I will experiment a bit with the fiocco. I keep them curing in a vacuum sealed bag in the fridge. You can use the following interactive spreadsheets to calculate the cure you will need for your own project; just fill in the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cell in the spreadsheet and hit enter. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

For the rumpetto, I used an alpine spice mix generally used for making speck.

*Notes:

1- Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

2- I like to use equilibrium curing. It allows me some flexibility in when I process the meat after curing, since the time left in the cure doesn’t matter, it is the percentages that are used that do. However, some people don’t do this type of curing and use excess curing instead. In excess curing, it is the time that the meat is left in the cure that matters. If you would rather do excess curing for culatello, cure the culatello in excess sea salt for 1 day per kg of meat. (For example, for a prosciutto that weights 14 kg, this means it would stay in excess sea salt for 14 days).

Casing

Once the culatello and fiocco have been allowed to cure for the appropriate amount of time, you need to rinse them and case them. The culatello is traditionally cased in a hog bladder, since it is one of the few things that will expand to the necessary size. Depending on where you live, you may be able to find hog bladders for sale online. I like the ones that have been packed in salt, not the ones that have been pre-dried that you need to rehydrate. However, it’s really whatever works for you.

You will need to soak the bladder first, to allow it to relax and expand.

When you’re ready to go, you cut open the mouth of the bladder, and stuff the rinsed and dried culatello inside. It may seem like it won’t fit, but chances are it will. Once its in, you need to sew the bladder back to together. You can do this using any type of needle and thread that works, or even surgical sutures! I treat the fiocco the same way as the culatello, so by the end I have two pieces of meat encased in bladders.

Once the meat is cased in the bladder, it’s time to tie it. Experts can do this process in the matter of 10 minutes or less. The rest of us can be happy just to have it done. It’s hard to explain the tying of the culatello, because you really need to watch it being done. There are a number of videos online for it, so I suggest searching google for videos on how to do the tying. The traditional culatello di Zibello type of tying is what we’re going for here. Of course, at this point the tying is mostly aesthetic, but it’s nice to learn the tradition and can actually be quite fun.

On the other hand, the rumpetto was easily cased in a beef bung, and was hand tied more simply. After tying, it was cold smoked for 4 hours using beechwood.

Drying (13C/55F, 70%RH, 9-12 months):

After you have tied your culatello, fiocco, and rumpetto, you are ready to let them hang.

Here, the hard part is the waiting. You are shooting for ~30% loss, but you also want to allow it to hang for enough time to develop a good flavor. I try to leave my fiocco hanging for at least 6 months and the culatello for at least 9 months, a year if I can handle it.

First, I pulled the rumpetto, or baby speck.

After the rumpetto, I pulled the fiocco.

Finally, it was time to pull the culatello.

Tasting

The nice part about curing the all 3 cuts (the rumpetto, the fiocco, and the culatello), is that the rumpetto is done after a short 3 months and the fiocco is done after 6 months, which allows you to satisfy your taste bud curiously about how the process went.

The rumpetto was cut into first.

The smoky fat combined really well with the alpine spices in this baby speck.

The first time I cut into the fiocco I was shocked.

After hearing about how it was the poor step sibling of the culatello, I wasn’t expecting too much. It was great. A nice strong flavor, and well balanced meat to fat ratio.

Cut forward 6 months to the culatello. When I cut open the culatello I think my jaw dropped. Jaw dropping beauty and flavor to match.

It was only then when I realized why the fiocco was called the ugly step sibling of the culatello. Not because the fiocco isn’t great, but because the culatello is SO fantastic. It’s hard to describe the flavor, but the balance of earthy sweetness with salty funk and smooth fat is the ultimate experience.

It’s great served by itself, with some crusty bread, or with some melon. Just make sure you have another one in the making, because it won’t last long!

Disclaimer: Meat curing is a hobby that comes with inherent risks. We can all do things to limit this risk by educating ourselves about the process and the utilizing the safest known methods to create our products. This website is for educational purposes only, and all experimentation should be done at each individuals own risk.

“This is it. The big one. The one we’ve all been waiting for.” -Oliver Wood

When I was a kid, I begged my parents to buy me lunchables; instead, they stocked my brown paper bag with prosciutto, mortadella, and crackers. In high school, prosciutto and arugula sandwiches became my daily lunch and pre-sports snack. When I studied abroad in Pisa, I alternated between caprese sandwiches and the wide range of salumi available to me, always finding a way back to the prosciutto. When I traveled to Spain and discovered the Spanish sister of prosciutto, jamón, I made my sister eat so much of it with me that she became a vegetarian for a bit when we came back home. So, it seemed only natural to me when I started along my meat curing journey, that making prosciutto would be on the list.

It took me a while. Making prosciutto, or jamón, is an intimidating undertaking. I read and read and read. I found books, blogs, online groups, and research articles. Finally, I traveled to Emilia-Romagna with my sister, and we visited two different prosciuttifici, one in Parma and one in Modena. It was these visits that finally gave me the confidence to go forward with curing my own prosciutto. (NOTE: All of this preparation was probably overkill, if you’re considering taking the plunge, go for it!)

Finally, I made contact with a farm in Michigan I found through online meat curing groups, Ham Sweet Farm. They raise great quality animals in a very conscientious manner, and their meat has been among the best I’ve used, if not the best. I got a rear leg from them to use for prosciutto, and the process was started.

The meat:

In Europe, animals are usually processed using seam butchery, meaning that individual muscles are kept intact. This is an intensive process that requires significant time and effort, so in America most animals are butchered by making cuts across the muscles, using technology such as the band saw. Both methods have their own pros and cons, but it’s important to know that if you receive the meat as a primal from an American processor, you will generally receive it with the ball and socket hip bone intact, and part of the hip bone just sawed through to create the cut of meat.

In order to cure prosciutto in the Italian way, as opposed to the Spanish way, you need to do some butchering to the leg primal. You will need to remove what is left of the hip bone, called the aitch bone in this context, and expose the ball part of the ball and socket hip joint. You can then clean up the surface, and this will give you the characteristic shape of the Italian prosciutto. If you prefer to cure the prosciutto the Spanish way, you can leave the aitch bone in place and simply clean up the surface of the meat as needed.

After the aitch bone is removed, the next important step is to milk the femoral vein. After death, blood can pool in the venous system. The processor will usually do their best to flush the system of all blood, but often they don’t get it all. You want to “milk” the vein by pressing firmly on the distal end of the vein and tracing its path through the leg until you get to the proximal, open end at the face of the leg. Blood should pour out of the open end. Repeat this until it doesn’t. If the meat you are using is still semi frozen (like mine was), you may not have a lot of luck with this process. You can try again after the “first salting”.

First Salting (4C/40F, 1 week):

For prosciutto, we add in a step we don’t usually use for other cured meats called the “first salting”. I learned about this method when visiting the prosciutto factories in Parma. It was explained to me that this is done to draw out excess blood and to limit bacteria growth early in the process.

To do the first salting, you take an excess of sea salt, and pack it onto the open face of the prosciutto, paying particular attention to the femoral head and the places where the veins are exposed. Use an extra-large ziplock bag in a plastic container (in case of leakage) and allow this process to take place in your regular fridge at 4C. After a week, you want to wash away the excess salt. Don’t be surprised if you see a bloody and salty liquid in the bottom of the bag… that just means the salt is doing its job of pulling out any excess blood. Try again to milk the femoral vein to get out any blood that may be left, and then move on to the second salting.

Second Salting (4C/40F, 3 weeks+):

For the second salting, we do an equilibrium cure. The Italian method just uses sea salt, while the Spanish method also uses nitrates. Because I am a fan of using nitrates for safety reasons, I added them into my cure.

*Note: I like to use equilibrium curing. It allows me some flexibility in when I process the meat after curing, since the time left in the cure doesn’t matter, it is the percentages that are used that do. However, some people don’t do this type of curing and use excess curing instead. In excess curing, it is the time that the meat is left in the cure that matters. If you would rather do excess curing for prosciutto, cure the prosciutto in excess sea salt for 1 day per kg of meat. (For example, for a prosciutto that weights 14 kg, this means it would stay in excess sea salt for 14 days).

Drying (13C/55F, 65%RH, 12 months):

After the meat as been cured, it is time to move it to the curing chamber. Brush off any remaining cure and hang it in the chamber set around 55F and 65% RH.

Allow the prosciutto to hang for 12 months, tracking the weight loss over this time if possible. By the end of the year, it should have lost around 30% of its initial weight.

Applying a Sugna:

Following in the Italian tradition, a sugna is applied after the meat has reached its approximate final weight loss, to allow for continued aging for flavor development without drying out the meat.

Before applying the sugna, make sure to use white vinegar to clean off the surface of the prosciutto, removing any mold that has accumulated on the surface.

The sugna is made of lard, rice flour, and black pepper. For my sugna, I rendered leaf lard that I had from Ham Sweet Farm. However, you can use lard that is purchased from the store as well.

After the sugna is applied, the meat is either put back in the curing chamber, or more ideally in a wine cellar or aging room at a slighter higher temperature to allow for better flavor development. Not everyone uses this method, so if you’d prefer to skip it, that’s alright too. Instead of continuing to age the prosciutto after 12 months and around 30% weight loss, you can move straight to harvesting and tasting your prosciutto.

Aging (17C/62F, 50%RH, 6 months+):

The prosciutto with the sugna is allowed to age for another 6 months to a year to develop a more complex flavor profile.

Tasting:

That’s it! When the prosciutto has been aged for at least 18 months, it’s ready! You can either hand cut the prosciutto or remove the bone and slice it on a deli slicer. To hand slice it, place the prosciutto on its side and cut away the skin and outer fat first. Then, carefully cut slices off the prosciutto using a thin, long knife. When you reach the bone, cut around it as much as possible. Then, flip the prosciutto over and cut from the other side. You can keep hand slicing around the bones until all the meat is gone!