Charcutería: The Soul of Spain

INTRODUCTION

ON CARMEN, PORK BLOOD, AND POLLA JOKES

Understanding the Spanish gastronomy of today and how it continues to influence the American gastronomy of tomorrow

MADRID

MANOLO, A FAITHFUL friend and barkeep at our favorite dive bar for cooks, rasps in his cigarette smoke-laden Spanish baritone:

Nunca has probado una morcilla como esta, Americano.

Translation: "You have never tasted a morcilla like this one, American."

His steady gaze dares me to disagree but, sadly, I realize he’s right. That’s all he wants to hear anyway.

Fiercely partisan culinary fightin’ words like these are typical in bars all around Madrid, often spoken over cañas of beer and plates of cured meats. In this instance, Manolo is talking about a ración of morcilla achorizada, a blood sausage from Jaén, that he’s just thrown in front of me like a gauntlet. This morcilla, unlike other blood sausages from around the world, is a mixture of chorizo masa mixed with pig’s blood, cooked potatoes, rice, onions, and spices. The stuffed morcilla is then smoked and dry cured and the result is utterly delicious; it’s sabroso in a way that makes me angry you can’t find anything like it where I live, since it’s difficult to find morcilla achorizada outside Spain and completely impossible to find it in the United States.

"Thanks for rubbing it in, cabrón."

I manage a sarcastic smile and stab the last slice with a toothpick. It’s one of the best embutidos I have ever tried—the intense smokiness of the morcilla is amazing—and my brain immediately starts rationalizing, with the calculating obsession of a heroin junkie getting helter-skelter for another hit, how I can sneak some of these wrinkled black delights back home to California without causing an international incident.

ANDALUCÍA

IN GRANADA THERE is a small, inconspicuous alleyway that houses one of the best flamenco clubs in Spain. You’d never know it, though, since the only advertisement for the club is some black graffiti lettering on a dimly lit, sunwashed wall. A scraggly, hastily painted arrow points deeper into the abyss. To make matters worse, the club is open only at night, which was where I found myself late one summer evening, staring into this great unknown.

The sign says: Eshavira Club.

Standing there in the moonlight, confronted by the deafening stillness of this portal leading to God-knows-where, I realized that at times like these, there are two types of people in the world: Some look down that alley and, acknowledging their lack of the requisite testicular fortitude, quickly sprint away with their tail between their legs; and others, spurred on by a chemical courage borne of the local inebriant of choice, plod down that alley and onward, toward destiny.

With a few hesitant steps made easier by said inebriant, I joined the latter group.

The sun had long since rose again before I emerged from that passage to a bright new day in southern Spain. I stumbled into the light with shaky, hungover steps, but I had sufficient faculties to notice that something was very different: This Andalucían culture, with a veneer of Moorish influence found everywhere—from the food to the architecture to the people themselves—finally made so much beautiful sense.

What did I find in the depths of that alley, you might ask?

I found a confluence of cultures; a place lost in time, yet wholly comfortable in the present. I found a consortium for flamenco and the people who cling to the practice of an ever-evolving art; the sort of place where old and older aren’t afraid to mingle with new, modern, and tragically hip. I found an ancient wooden door; a bouncer with only one name; a bar that serves beer or sangria y nada mas; and a universe centered on a dusty, worn stage manned by men and women who stomp, clap, and sing the spirit of Gitano pain and pride.

Down that alley, I found a small piece of the Andalucían soul.

EXTREMADURA

IT’S A GOOD day to die, little piggies.

Here, 45 minutes away from the nearest city, herds of Ibérico pigs roam from tree to tree, searching for acorns to eat. They also do their best to avoid the butchers in blue coveralls—poised with knives in hand—who stalk the herd to cull three pigs for our matanza, a wintertime ritual slaughter/alcohol-and-pork-fueled party that has deep roots in Spanish antiquity.

The Ibérico pigs are anything but pretty—they are closely related to wild boars—but they possess a unique characteristic: They store large quantities of their fat intramuscularly—what we in America would call marbling. This naturally high amount of marbling makes Ibérico meat highly coveted and expensive, in large part because the fat is monounsaturated, like olive oil, and flavored by the acorns my delicious little friends gorge themselves on during the montanera (the acorn-feeding months prior to slaughter).

At the Rocamador, a gorgeous converted monastery and four-star hotel situated in the countryside of rugged Extremadura, the Tristancho family has been conducting matanzas for their guests, who often include chefs and the social elite of Madrid, for years. These guests are taken out to the family farm, where they participate in a slaughtering ritual dating back to the earliest Iberian settlers, before they reap the rewards of their labor.

Here, I was presented with an opportunity that a line cook like me had only ever dreamed of: the chance to learn about Spanish pork butchery and charcuterie in the heart of Ibérico country. Without hesitation, I jumped in to help a gaggle of Extremeñan mothers and grandmothers mix and stuff a local specialty sausage, when my education and hazing began concurrently.

Jeffrey, (pronounced Yeh-free here in the heart of Extremadura) ¿Como está tu chorizo? Laughter.

Translation: Jeffrey, how’s your sausage? (I was in the process of stuffing chorizo into a casing, using hand motions you could describe only as masturbatory, so the double entendre was very much intentional.)

Jeeeeefrey. ¿Qué chiquito es, no? More double entendre, more laughter.

Translation: It’s a little small, right?

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrey, y es blando también. ¿Le quieres dar un masaje?

Translation: And it’s limp, too. Do you want me to give it a massage? Now, they were ROFL-ing.

Apparently, gentle teasing of any extranjero in the group’s midst was also part of the tradition (I think Anthony Bourdain would have accurately called me the FNG, or Fucking New Guy, in that moment). To make matters worse, I was an American cook—a gringo, a guiri, a white boy—who fortunately knew just enough of the language of the kitchen to understand both what I was being asked to do and that I was the butt of an inside joke.

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrey. Ahora tu chorizo es perfecto.

Es muy grande … ¿eres el orgullo de tu madre, no?

Translation: "Your chorizo is perfect."

It is very big. You must be your mother’s pride, no?

There I was, smack in the middle of a Spanish yo’ mama joke. I laughed, too; who wouldn’t? But my pride and my mama’s honor were at stake. Retaliation was necessary.

Cuidado con este chorizo extranjero, Señora. ¿Creo que es demasiado grande para ti, no?

Translation: "Be careful with this foreigner’s chorizo, ma’am. I think it’s a little big for you to handle, right?" Score one for the extranjero.

And so it went for weeks with mi familia Extremeña. We ate, we drank, we took the lives of Ibérico pigs in the name of deliciousness and necessity, and we connected with the age-old tradition of making charcutería, just as these mothers and grandmothers had with their mothers and grandmothers. And the ladies gave their hijo extranjero—their foreign son—a load of crap and an education in comida casera for which I am eternally grateful.

And all was right and delicious in the heart of Extremadura.

THE SPAIN I KNOW

THIS IS MY Spain, a place of transcendent memories centered on the diverse foods, rich culture, and welcoming people whom I have come to adopt as my own—if they’ll have me.

These memories are the staccato sounds of the flamenco bailaora’s footfalls, the multicolored sights of pintxo platters laid out on bars in San Sebastián, and the unmistakable smells of charcutería¹—that smoky aroma of cured pork mixed with pimentón, which permeates much of Spain’s cuisine, culture, history, and regional pride.

But while Spain stands porky cheek to jowl with other great cured meat–producing nations, such as Italy and France, the charcuterie traditions of Spain are perhaps the least understood of all three. That’s because Spain has an almost infinite number of regional variances to its charcuterie delicacies and woefully little exportation of these products, least of all to the United States. In fact, only a handful of Spanish producers have overcome the strenuous regulations set forth by the US Department of Agriculture and, as a result, only a fraction of the products available in the Spanish market actually make it to American shores.

These restrictions—coupled with a general misunderstanding of Spanish gastronomy in the ’70s and ’80s that lumped it under the general heading of Hispanic cooking alongside the cuisines of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and much of Central and South America—mean that a niche product like traditional charcutería from Spain is just now coming into popularity.

This limited distribution also means that you probably haven’t tasted the sheer eye-rolling deliciousness that is morcilla achorizada, fuet, or sobrasada—birthrights for any Spaniard, but for extranjeros like you or me, simply items for the top of our bucket lists.

Fortunately for us, however, Spanish cuisine is thriving. For one, there’s been a globalization of world cuisines over the past decade or so that has planted the seeds of classic Spanish culinary traditions everywhere (thanks to people like Penelope Casas and chefs like José Andrés and Ferran Adrià). Likewise, culinary awareness has grown dramatically thanks to the foodie culture that permeates our collective consciousness via the Internet, food television, blogs, and other media. And last, truly artisan foods like charcuterie, fermentation, baking, and preservation have seen a resurgence in the American culinary lexicon as many of us demand to know the history, craft, and quality of our food.

WHAT WAS OLD IS NEW AGAIN

THAT LAST PIECE of the puzzle—a return to artisan cuisine (meaning food that is hand-crafted, small-scale, made with an eye for quality and detail, and as far as possible from a Domino’s pizza, a Frito Lay chip, or any other corporation that dares to co-opt the term)—has been the catalyst for the rebirth of charcuterie traditions that are now so popular in the United States.

As Chef Thomas Keller perfectly phrased it in his foreword to Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s book Charcuterie, these foods have been all around us for years, but mostly in commercially manufactured forms, like supermarket bolognas, hot dogs, and other meats of dubious origin. The butchery and charcuterie traditions of our forefathers became misplaced in our fast-paced, commercially driven food culture, and these pseudofoods are living proof.

Today’s chef- and butcher-driven charcuterie programs, by contrast, are much smaller in scale. The process often includes breaking down the animals in-house and attempts to vertically integrate the food’s progress from farm to table, all in the name of producing the highest-quality product possible—as opposed to cutting corners for the sake of profit.

This streamlined farmer-to-consumer supply chain, which includes such luminaries as producers Armandino Batali, Allan Benton, and Paul Bertolli and chefs April Bloomfield, Jamie Bissonnette, Chris Cosentino, and Brian Polcyn, among so many others, has pushed American gastronomy forward by leading us back to our culinary past.

THAT BRINGS ME to why I wrote this book.

My journey of a thousand meat-curing miles began with a single obsession that we, the American public, have yet to fully be exposed to: the wide array of cured meats available in Spain. Sure, our collective charcuterie IQ has increased over the past ten or so years. We’ve become generally acquainted with popular cured meats like mortadella and pepperoni. Hell, we even know various forms of prosciutto, kielbasa, and saucisson. But chorizos? Morcillas? Butifarras? No tenemos ni puta idea, amigos.

Spanish-style charcuterie is underrepresented, misunderstood, and largely unheard of in this country, as any expat Spaniard who has searched the United States from coast to coast for a taste of home well knows. While the blame for this state of affairs largely rests with stifling restrictions that keep out far too many Spanish cured goodies, our historical misunderstanding of the traditions of Spanish cuisine is also a culprit. Case in point: No self-respecting Spanish abuela I know makes chicken with green olives, but for some reason countless American cookbooks from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s erroneously call this dish Spanish Chicken.

That said, American gastronomy may be a melting pot that now correctly represents our love affair with Spanish flavors and techniques, but the traditions of charcutería are still woefully absent from it.

That is why I embarked on a culinary odyssey on the topic—to introduce Americans to regional and national charcutería specialties that permeate the hearts and souls of the Spanish people. In doing so, I hope to provide a road map for producing and using these recipes in your own kitchen, just in case you don’t feel like braving a transatlantic flight or US smuggling ordinances for your own slice of Extremadura, País Vasco, or Castilla–La Mancha.

During my hands-on education, I participated in the opportunity of a lifetime in 2009, when I was awarded one of only two Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior, known as ICEX) scholarships given that year to American cooks. The ICEX scholarship program is a culinary grant sponsored by the Spanish government, which allowed me to cook in kitchens all over the Spanish countryside and provided me with the chance to make charcutería elbow-to-elbow with the maestros (or, more often than not, the maestras) of this craft.

In this book, I’ll share much of my journey, the times I learned and practiced the art of charcutería and la cocina Española. You’ll meet the cast of characters who helped me understand why the cuisine and culture of Spain are so unique, and why they deserve a place on the world stage.

First, I’ll discuss the history of chorizos, jamones, and other forms of charcutería as they evolved through the ritual pig slaughters known as matanzas, finishing up with the modern age of industrialized charcuterie and the restrictions placed on it in the United States.

From there, I will introduce you to something you’ve likely never seen before: Spanish pork butchery, which differs significantly from methods used in the United States. Specifically, I’ll cover the cerdo Ibérico—the famous black Ibérico pigs—and discuss the matanza ritual, as well as Spanish-specific butchery cuts for pigs, including the secreto, pluma, presa, aguja, and others. I hope you have the opportunity to seek out these cuts on your own, but this information will also serve you well later in the book, when I discuss the different parts required for different types of charcutería.

Next, I’ll continue with the basics of charcutería, including the steps involved in making fresh, semicured, dry-cured, and whole-muscle charcuterie. I’ll also cover equipment and ingredient options that will help you get the job done, including the best ways for weighing, measuring, buying, and practicing as you start curing your own meat.

Then I’ll get to el alma of the book: the recipes and techniques that I learned from my time cooking, traveling, and learning with the chefs, sabias, and matanceros of Spain.

The recipes are divided into chapters according to the techniques involved for making specific types of charcuterie. For many of these preparations, I’ll also include my favorite ways to use the charcuterie when preparing delicious traditional dishes. These cherished recipes were given to me by the talented Spaniards I’ve come to call mi familia.

I start with the most basic of preparations: salmuera (brine) and salazón (salt cure), two of the oldest and simplest preservation techniques that yield some of the best-known charcutería recipes.

Next comes adobo, a technique that involves using a marinade as the primary means of preservation.

Then, you’ll learn about the escabeche technique, a method of hot pickling for proteins, fish, or vegetables that allows them to be stored for a period of time to ripen and mature.

Conservas y Confits introduces recipes for preserving meats, vegetables, and seafood in the style of Spain’s renowned canned foods. Surprisingly, in Spain canned foods are considered a luxury and can actually cost more than identical foods in their fresh form.

The largest section of the book covers embutidos, the various sausages and other stuffed meats found throughout Spain. There, you’ll learn about fresh, cooked, semicured, and dry-cured charcuterie, as well as recipes for using each style of sausage in traditional and modern preparations.

Next, I’ll share with you my personal favorite corner of the world of charcutería: pâtés and terrines. This subject has become very popular in the past several years, as terrine boards of different sizes and shapes have begun appearing on restaurant menus across the United States.

Last, but certainly not least, you’ll learn about the traditional sauces and garnishes typically served with charcutería, followed by a short chapter of traditional desserts and licores that incorporate charcuterie recipes and techniques.

CHAPTER

1

WHO’S YOUR PAPÍ CHULO?

Rediscovering our porcine forefathers of the Iberian Peninsula

THE HISTORY OF charcuterie in Spain, like much of the historical record of Europe’s cured meats legacy, is difficult to trace. The details have been lost to time, but it’s safe to say that the evolution of charcutería is closely linked to the life and death of the local pig population, Celtic-Iberian tribes, the march of the Holy Roman Empire, and the oral traditions passed down as early man (and woman) discovered that their snouted, floppy-eared, porcine companions were in fact a delicious means of survival.

EL TOCINO LA OLLA, EL HOMBRE LA PLAZA, Y LA MUJER LA CASA.²

THE PORK BELLY IN THE POT, THE MAN IN THE PLAZA, AND THE WOMAN IN THE HOUSE.

—An old, and decidedly chauvinistic, Spanish refrain

PIGS, WARS, CELTS, AND COWS

A NUMBER OF cultures occupied Spain in early times, and together they helped lay the foundations for many regionally unique food cultures.

Phoenicians crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and founded colonies in the southern Iberian cities Cadiz and Tartessus in the ninth century BC. Carthaginians took up residence in the Balearic Islands before setting out to conquer most of Iberia in the third century BC, with Carthago Nuevo (located in modern-day Murcia) serving as their base of power and capital.³

Around the fifth century BC, northern Spain was occupied by the ancestors of today’s Basque people and tribes of early Celtic colonists. The latter is credited with establishing a strong pork-centric culture, and possibly the initial regular practices of the matanza,⁴ as they marched across the Pyrenees and eventually settled north of the Rio Duero and Rio Ebro.⁵ These early Celtic settlers viewed the pig as more than a simple food source, however; animals like pigs, bulls, and lambs were worthy of sacrificial rituals, verracos (statuettes) for worship, and representation on ancient coins from the era.⁶

After the conquest of Spain by the Roman Empire in 19 BC, the country was renamed Hispania. The cosmopolitan Romans brought ideas, goods, and technology to the Iberian Peninsula via the Roman roads. Concepts became a shared commodity between lands through the spread of Christian teachings, architectural fundamentals for building marvels like aqueducts, new farming methods, and—most important to the culinary world—new charcuterie and meat-preserving techniques, many of which likely arose from Rome’s conquest of Gaul around 51 BC.

Those meat-curing secrets begat jamones and embutidos coveted throughout the Empire, as towns like Pompeiopolis (known today as Pamplona) structured whole economies around exportation of their jamones.⁷ These culinary specialties were solely the province of Rome’s social elite, since only the wealthy upper class had the financial means to procure such luxuries from faraway Hispania.⁸

THE CHURCH TAKES CHARGE

AS ROMAN RULE declined in the third century AD, Visigoths from the north gradually extended their control over Hispania, while the porcine-centric culture of the peninsula’s emerging gastronomy continued to flourish. Specifically, acorn-fed pigs roamed even more freely in their native oak forests once they became protected by new Gothic laws codified in the Liber Iudiciorum. In this Visigothic book of laws, Iberian pigs received specified protections for their feeding habitat in oak-tree laden dehesas, and protections were also put into place for the gradual transformation of freshly harvested Iberian hams into succulent jamones.⁹

At the same time, the Catholic Church took a leading role in maintaining formal education, preserving historical records, and managing government in the region. As a result, Hispania was one of the few centers of culinary development that survived both the Visigothic reign and the 800-year Moorish occupation in later years. For example, monasteries like the order of San Fructuoso maintained large herds of pigs for making embutidos. The cured meats kept the resident monks and traveling pilgrims fed, and the monks were also able to study the pigs and products made from them. In fact, the order maintained archives about medicinal uses for pork. Their work makes up a good portion of the archival information about charcutería that survives today.¹⁰

800 YEARS OF MOORISH RULE

BEGINNING IN AD 711 and continuing for the next eight centuries until the completion of the Reconquista in 1492, most of the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by Moorish and Berber invaders from Africa—all except the northern states, which defiantly resisted occupation and remained the last vestiges of Christian freedom in Spain. During these centuries of occupation, Spain was renamed yet again (Al-Andalus) and religious tolerance was granted, up to a certain point, by the conquering Moors. Specifically, the populace’s cultural and religious practices were allowed to continue under the conditions of stiff taxation, which eventually became a rallying point for revolution for many native Spaniards.

Fomenting anger over both the occupation and the new taxes shifted the pig from a symbol of wealth or family survival to one of Spanish pride and defiance. Since eating pork or even handling pigs by Muslims was forbidden by strict religious laws, the only people who could farm and eat pigs in Spain during this period were Christians opposed to the occupation.

The matanza became the ultimate act of defiance, as Spanish families moved their pig-slaughtering practices away from the hidden corrals or inner courtyards of their homes to front yards and village squares.

Thus, the matanza became the ultimate act of defiance, as Spanish families moved their pig-slaughtering practices away from the hidden corrals or inner courtyards of their homes to front yards and village squares. These actions loudly proclaimed their political and culinary leanings, while also delivering a great big, passive-aggressive, porky middle finger to the ruling Moors.¹¹

NEW WORLD, NEW INGREDIENTS, NEW CHARCUTERÍA

IN 1492, CHRISTOPHER Columbus sailed the ocean blue to the New World with the blessing and sponsorship of Spain’s King Fernando and Queen Isabel. It may be debatable whether Columbus was in fact the first European to discover these shores, but we can thank him for bringing eight special passengers along for the ride on his second voyage. Part of his precious cargo included eight Ibérico pigs, the forerunners of our swine population, which were released to multiply and proliferate on the island of Hispaniola, where the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic exist today (Hernando de Soto later brought more pigs to continental North America in 1539).¹²

Columbus’s voyages, and those of subsequent explorers, not only planted some very important culinary seeds here in the Americas; they also forever changed European gastronomy. Specifically, the culinary heritage of the Old World became enriched with new ingredients like corn, peppers, potatoes, chocolate, and other discoveries; notably, some very important red-pepper-tinged changes occurred in the charcutería of the period.¹³

Peppers from the Americas eventually made their way into recipes for chorizos, lomos, morcillas, and other forms of Spanish charcuterie—sometimes in a smoked, dried, and powdered form (pimentón) and other times as a mashed paste (from ñora and choricero peppers). As a result, all manner of sausages became tinted a vibrant red, and Spanish embutidos were imbued with a heretofore unknown smoky, spicy quality. Quite simply, it was one of the greatest developments in Spanish culinary history.

As described by noted author and Spanish culinary expert Teresa Barrenechea, this truly was a golden age for Spain, from both a culinary and cultural perspective:

Spain served as a center for Europe and the gateway to the newly conquered lands of the Americas. The grandson of the Catholic Kings, Carlos I, ruled the sprawling Hapsburg Empire and became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. With the seat of the Hapsburgs now in Spain, food traditions traveled back and forth all over Europe, affecting the eating habits of the entire continent. Then, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hapsburgs gave way to the Bourbons, who introduced French styles to the Spanish court and upper classes.¹⁴

COMFORT IN DARK TIMES

THE RICH, MULTICULTURAL gastronomic landscape of Spain—a collective harmony of so many countries and cultures dating back over a thousand years—came into serious jeopardy in modern times. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and dictator Francisco Franco’s reign (1939–1975) thereafter, the autonomy of Spain’s provinces faced oppression and near annihilation. Everything from local linguistic dialects to bullfights to flamenco came under scrutiny by a regime hell-bent on uniting the proudly regionalist Spanish people under a single banner: one language and one rule.¹⁵

And the dark times continued thereafter. An economic depression ensued until the 1950s, leading to a strong black market for everyday luxuries like coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The cuisine of the era, which of course was focused on wasting absolutely nothing, showcased necessary innovations Spanish households had to employ to make the most of what they had. Stale bread provided a means for thickening soups. Families found ways to use every odd and end from slaughtered animals, and many people turned to preserved foods like charcutería to get the protein and fat they needed, since fresh meat was far too expensive.

Coincidentally, as suppression and economic woes swept across Spain during and after the Franco era, charcutería production soared. In fact, its popularity reached its highest levels to date at this point in time, as businesses with fiercely guarded family recipes for curing meat expanded.¹⁶ Franco’s suppressive regime opposed overt regionalist displays of language, culture, and the arts, so the people of Catalonia, País Vasco, Galicia, and other regions turned to their native charcutería recipes and traditions—a source of comfort to their souls—as a means of expression, freedom, and economic sanctuary from oppression.

MODERN SPAIN ON THE WORLD STAGE

THESE DAYS, CATALONIA—just one of seventeen distinct comunidades autónomas (autonomous communities) in Spain—alone recognizes seventeen different versions of chorizo. And while the Catalan viewpoint on cuisine is certainly valid (they gave the world Ferran Adrià, after all), add to this number the various local, regional, and national charcutería specialties of the rest of the country, and you’ll begin to understand the dizzying scope and depth of Spain’s cured meat lineage.

Generally considered the national sausage of Spain, more than 65,000 tons of chorizo are made by Spanish producers every year, which amounts to about 40 percent of Spain’s entire sausage production.¹⁷ In fact, chorizo is such an innate part of the Spanish soul that every February, a festival is held in its honor in the small town of Vila de Cruces in Galicia. Charcutiers from all over Spain bring their products, and festival goers devour and debate over whose is the best in the land.

But for all of the hype about chorizo within Spain’s borders, very little information about this delicacy has still yet to make it out of the country. Sure, you might see chorizo at your local Whole Foods or spot José Andrés, one of the most vocal proponents of all things Spanish, waxing poetic about it on TV. But only in the last few years have Spanish producers gained access to the American market, and even then only a small fraction of pork-laden goodies have trickled through.

In October 2002, for example, Palacios, a producer of chorizo based in La Rioja, became the first to be allowed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to import chorizo into the United States.¹⁸ And while the Palacios product is certainly a decent chorizo, it is hardly representative of the multitude of other charcutería products enjoyed every day by the average Spaniard. Fortunately, in recent years, companies like La Tienda, Fermín, 5J, Wagshal’s, and a few others have been allowed to either import some Spanish charcutería products or put their traditional recipes to work here in the United States, creating authentic reproductions.

Likewise, jamón Ibérico is only a recent revelation here in the United States. For years, Embutidos Fermín fought to educate the USDA about its products and the process involved—but it wasn’t until 2007 that the first legal jamones were ceremonially sliced at José Andrés’s Washington, DC, restaurant, Jaleo. In a New York Times article by Amanda Hesser, exporter Jesús García commented on the issue, The problem is that American authorities do not recognize the European Union’s standards for production. They want companies to follow their own standards. And some companies do not want to change.¹⁹

Fast forward to today. Americans still have very few options when it comes to trying the lesser-known varieties of charcutería available to the Spanish people. Hope exists, however, that this may be soon rectified, as evidenced by the sweeping acquittal of many Italian cured-meat imports in April 2013.²⁰

For now, anyway, we can travel to Spain and consume to our heart’s content. We can buy what precious little is available in our country. We can make it ourselves. Or we can make a futile attempt at stuffing contraband pork into our suitcases and pray, with the wide-eyed, guilt-laden face of a Colombian drug mule, not to get busted by the Department of Homeland Security.

Just know that on this point, dear reader, I can offer a bit of personal advice: Getting caught is an epic fail of disastrous proportions, even if it’s not your fault.

Case in point: After a trip to Madrid and the surrounding countryside, my Spanish family thought that they’d surprise me with a little package of morcilla secreted away in my suitcase. It was a gesture borne of more heart than brains, as ultimately it truly was a great surprise—especially when I found myself tagged for an agricultural check at a particularly thorough US Customs checkpoint.

I simply didn’t understand. I’d filled out my Customs card and done everything right. Yet there I was, unloading my dirty unmentionables on a counter for God, curious passersby, and the TSA to look over and admire. And that’s when I caught a waft of something familiarly porky, and my heart sank: There, in the gloved hands of an agent, was a gift-wrapped package of undeniably dubious origin wrapped in orange-tinted, grease-stained butcher paper and covered with a plastic baggie.

And all I could stammer was: "Awwww, shit."

Fortunately, after some quick explaining to the Customs agents who took pity on me (and thankfully didn’t stick me with either the $50,000 fine or the 10-year jail sentence), I was let off with a warning. Of course, that warning entailed having my name entered into a national database as a person of concern with notes of the encounter attached. That’s why to this very day, whenever I go through US Customs, I get the same question: "Sir, do you have any meats in your possession? Perhaps some ‘ham-own’?"

Trust me, folks…until the USDA pulls that ginormous stick (or maybe it’s a big ham bone?) out of its ass, it’s going to be much easier to make charcutería yourself or buy it from a legal vendor. And I’m here to help!

CHAPTER

2

THE SECRETO OF THE SECRETO

Surviving bad hangovers, great pork, and crazy butchers with hatchets

HIT UP ANY self-respecting restaurante serving the elusive, uniquely Spanish cut of pork called secreto Ibérico—be it a temple of alta cocina in the heartland of the Costa Brava or a roadside bar in the outskirts of Badajoz—and you will notice something peculiar; something that runs counter to the government-advised method of pork cookery we Americans have come to know.

DEL CERDO HASTA LOS ANDARES.

OF THE PIG, EVERYTHING CAN BE EATEN.

The pork will arrive to your table properly poco hecho—that’s medium rare in American culinary parlance. Yes, medium-rare pork…but relax, my fellow Americans. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Ibérico pork is raised with love, slaughtered with respect, marbled like the finest Kobe beef, and loaded with the sort of flavor you simply cannot find anywhere else. And that is why Spain’s four-legged national porcine treasure is simply not meant for the kind of indistinguishable, chalk-dry, cooked-to-160°F ending that the USDA has historically recommended as the only means of safe pork consumption since the last century.

But this chapter is not merely a diatribe against the way in which we have been told to incinerate our pork in this country since the 1950s (thankfully, we have progressively rebelled against The Man in recent years and recommendations have relaxed…a little²¹). Rather, I am not-so-subtly hinting at a different way of doing things. My goal for this chapter is to present to you the perspective and practices of porcine husbandry, butchery, and cookery of the Iberian people to compare and contrast with our own.

What follows in this chapter, therefore, will be an introduction of sorts into the life, the death, and the afterlife of the famed Ibérico pig. In the Spanish countryside, these meadow-dwelling, acorn-grazing herds live out their lives before being dispatched with honor for their one-of-a-kind musculature and delectable, acorn-imbued fat.

I’ll start by discussing our four-legged friends’ final days of life as part of a typical matanza, including defining the ritual and explaining how it’s performed. I’ll then take you through the laborious task of breaking down Ibéricos following the Spanish method, including identifying the various commercial cuts of pork you’re likely to find in Spanish markets. Last, I’ll contrast the economy and methodology of Spanish pork butchery with our own American system of breaking pigs down.

PORCOPHOBES AND PORCOPHILES

ANTHROPOLOGIST MARVIN HARRIS theorized that the human race can be divided into porcophobes and porcophiles; his theory differentiates between cultures that consider the pig forbidden in all its forms and those that consider all things swine-related to be righteous, delicious, and true.²²

If we take this theory at face value, the Spanish decidedly fall into the latter group: They have consistently ranked as one of the top five pork-consuming nations in the world for the past 10 years,²³ and they are the world’s largest producers and consumers of ham with production at around 40 million hams a year (roughly 1 ham per Spaniard!). Most Spanish hams never leave Spain, however, since Spain exports only about 10 percent of its annual production due to high demand within its own borders.²⁴

And the Spaniards display that fervent love and respect for their native Babe most at the inception point: the age-old matanzas del cerdo (pig slaughters), which are held every winter across the entire country. While this ritual originated as a burden of necessity—a means for entire regions of people to survive harsh winter conditions while living on the cusp of poverty—these days, most matanzas are parties that serve a festive, social purpose. Modern matanzas are familial gatherings where attendees are plied with enough free-flowing alcohol and soul-satisfying food to keep them blissfully elbows-deep in piggy blood, guts, and gore.

In years past, matanzas took place around holidays honoring local saints, thereby allowing entire extended families to get together in their households for the occasion. Families would employ the services of some matanceros (slaughterers, typically men), a matancera (a person in charge of meat processing, typically a woman), and a group of sabias (the word literally means wise women, as they are the ones with the knowledge of various embutido recipes and techniques). The team would work in concert—with the family doing the grunt work–to ensure the quality standards for the slaughter and to make enough fresh and cured meats to sustain all for the year to come.

The Spanish produce around 40 million hams a year (roughly 1 ham per Spaniard!).

In cities like La Alberca in Salamanca, home of Embutidos Fermín, the entire populace waits yearlong with giddy excitement for its Ibérico-based celebration during the festival weekend of San Anton. Throughout the year, the town pet—an Ibérico pig, of course—wanders the streets with abandon and is fed and fattened up by everyone in town. Then, in January, a great matanza is held during the festival weekend and the pig is raffled off to its lucky new owner. (In years past, the pig always went to a needy family in the area to ensure the family’s survival. Today, the raffle benefits local charities.)

Nowadays, however, all pigs meant for commercial distribution and many pigs destined for individual families are brought to a local slaughterhouse and killed in a controlled environment, inspected by an on-site veterinarian for any diseases, and only then released for further processing.²⁵ These are modern changes for modern times.

MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A PIG

ASIDE FROM THE relatively new, factory-based slaughter system (begrudgingly set in place years ago to help prevent the spread of trichinosis, which is now nearly nonexistent), the matanza thankfully varies little from time-honored methods.

For example, some matanzas last for two days, and some for three. Some families make embutidos on the first day, and some on the last. The type of embutidos made will vary depending on what region you hail from, but generally speaking, the cuts of pork and schedules of production at most matanzas are all similar to those you’ll learn about in this chapter.

My experiences with the matanza ritual, which mostly took place in Extremadura, a rugged region in the western part of Spain, taught me that it is for neither the faint-hearted nor the weak-willed. Matanzas are intense, draining, and days-long affairs requiring early and constant fortification from food as well as drink. Both come in copious amounts, and the latter is preferably a strong alcoholic variety served before, during, and especially after a long day’s work.

Following is an account of a typical first day of a two-day matanza on a working farm in the rural countryside of Spain—the sort of place that harvests and processes all of their own animals on-site. I participated in many such matanzas over the course of a few seasons, with shifts starting in the early morning before the sun rises and continuing on until the early evening. The schedule often varied a bit depending on the temperature of the farmhouse and surrounding countryside, the time of day, the degree of porcine stubbornness we faced, and the state of hangover the butchers and the rest of us were in. But this is more or less how it went.

BEFORE THAT, HOWEVER, let me give you the first, last, and only disclaimer of this book: What follows is not for those who prefer to think of meat as a nameless, faceless, sterile, Styrofoam-packaged product available at your local supermarket.

The matanza ritual—at its core—is dedicated to following techniques handed down through the centuries to minimize animal suffering and maximize usable yields—in addition to being unacceptably cruel, upsetting the animal ruins the meat.

Nonetheless, slaughtering pigs is a messy business that cannot be accomplished without a sharp