IDENTIFY A GOOD QUALITY SPANISH HAM

How to identify a good quality Jamón Ibérico:

	The leg should be long and thin, without hair.
	The hoof of the hog should be dark.
	When you squeeze the ham with your fingers, your fingers should sink into the ham easily. The fat of the ham should be soft and smooth.
	There should be a label from The Instituto Nacional de Denominaciones de Origin (INDO) that shows the ham’s DO – Denominación de Origen. As a regulated agricultural product, all approved hams have a DO (place of origin).
	Your ham should weigh between 6 – 7.5 kgs.
	Each ham has a date branded on its leg which shows the date (week and year) that the hog was killed. From this, you can determine whether it had a sufficient amount of curing – 20 – 28 months.
	When you cut the ham, the best hams have strips of fat throughout the ham (not only on the side). These strips come from a hog that ate lots of acorns – the fat is spread evenly throughout the meat.