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Whoooooaaaa nice! We pay about $150 a pound out here for jamon Iberico if you can even find it. That puts a 14lb leg at about $2,100.00. Although I'm sure if you buy the whole leg you're getting a deal of maybe $1,300 or so? And that's not the good stuff either. I do splurge on a 1/4lb here and there when I feel like I deserve it.
Don't get a whole leg if you're not going to eat it all within a few months. It may develop worms.
Unless it's a miraculous ham...
(It's been a few years since I posted this before, so it's worth another look. Also I like the surprising fact that it was set in one of my favourite places in Madrid.)
I think we pay about 350 Euros for a pata negra de bellota... Seems that the middleman is making quite some money Also lots of scams going on with Iberian pork, so watch out before you buy!
My source is pretty reliable out here but he's honest about it not being top of the line jamon, and I'm a pretty discerning palette too. I'm sure after shipping, Spanish customs, American customs and all that the profit margins aren't enormous. It's just every hand that touches it needs there cut.
It would probably cost even more if you got one of these guys to cut it for you: http://www.cortadoresdejamonasociados.es/ I love the guy's face on the picture. It looks like he just won a boxing match. I am the ham slicing king of the woooorld!!
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
I just hate that crap and every year it comes back on a wood stand... right there in the kitchen.
'Cus you were raised with it you just don't know how lucky you are. I spent my entire childhood thinking ham was made by Oscar Meyer and it's a slimy circle.
In the Southeastern USA there is "Virginia" ham. It is so dry and salty that slices are usually soaked in a few changes of fresh water before it is heated and served.
I don't know if garlic and alcaparras are popular on your side but that's the kind of strong tastes that I enjoy.
Like just eating em whole?? Not popular but I do it. Pickled garlic pieces, roasted garlic pieces, even raw. Luckily my lady loves it too. Capers are great too, extra on my carpaccio Por favor!
There's ONE restaurant in all of LA that I know of at carries country ham. You pick which farm you want it from, they source from 3. I love it! Gunna ask em next time if they soak it. It is less salty then Iberico I've noticed.
I don't know if garlic and alcaparras are popular on your side but that's the kind of strong tastes that I enjoy.
Some friends and I used to eat regularly at Sep's de Paris in Mexico City. They had wonderful steaks, but one friend always had the huachinango veracruzano.
A red snapper is prepared with the skin still on. Lines of diagonal cuts are made in the skin at intervals of 1/2" or maybe 1 cm, followed by another set of cuts at right angles. Where the lines intersect a clove of garlic is placed. The fish is baked, basted with tomato sauce.
My friend would smell like garlic for 2 or 3 days afterward, no matter how many times she brushed her teeth or rinsed with mouth wash. My brother the M.D. explained that oil from the garlic permeates the lungs, and slowly evaporates over the next few days.
I like to fix spinach the way I first had it at the restaurant El Callejón in Madrid (closed several years ago). The peeled cloves from a whole head of garlic are stewed with two servings of fresh spinach in water, olive oil and a pinch of salt. Lemon juice is drizzled over the spinach when it is served. Stewing the garlic makes it surprisingly mild tasting.
I spent my entire childhood thinking ham was made by Oscar Meyer and it's a slimy circle.
Not an expert, for other than German varieties having merely experienced Italian ham from Parma and some Russian sorts (including the burried kind). Of those the original German makes (air dried, smoked or cooked) used to taste best. But I can imagine how the Spanish specialities may taste even better as the way those pigs live and feed their meat must be coming close to those of wild bore; and wild bore has been the most delicious swine I ever tried.
German ham used to be very tasty in general until the mass production method set in. Since then I can relate to what you mean with "slimy". The ham you get in German supermarkets now are all slippery and tasteless. I suppose it having to do with how the animals are being kept as well as with those slick methods to increase weight by introducing salt solution (injections) and water (keeping them thirsty and providing water at last) before sloughtering.
The difference between todays mass product and traditional German ham (that can still be found, however now as expensive delicacy only) is really huge.
Kind of like when I fist time ate chicken in the USA, sensing some strange chemical taste in there. Today we know it coming from chlorine. (How on earth could something like that ever be allowed!?)
Anyway, look how qualities that used to be standard, today are delicacies with prices going ever more through the roof.
I mean which pig would had ever dreamed that a single leg of it would become several grands worth? ... It´s a bit like Elton John insuring his hands for several million bucks, or so. (Though way more reasonably so.)
Kind of like when I fist time ate chicken in the USA, sensing some strange chemical taste in there. Today we know it coming from chlorine. (How on earth could something like that ever be allowed!?)
I personally find it nice that chicken farms are equipped with swimming pools.
I'll show myself out...
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Today we know it coming from chlorine. (How on earth could something like that ever be allowed!?)
It's a food safety measure - the chlorine is anti-microbial. It helps kill salmonella, e. coli, campylobacter and a few other nasty bacterial killers. There are very few examples of chlorophilic microbes running around (and the only ones I've ever read about have been lab-grown). Other antimicrobials are used in the chicken industry - all used are FDA-approved.
The European approach has been in part to euthanize whole flocks where salmonella is found. This has over time reduced the occurrence of salmonella but at a (continuing) high cost borne by the consumers and the producers.
The word "Chlorhühnchen" appears to have become a prominent part of German vocabulary in discussions on food advocacy and policy - topics which in much of the EU seem to provoke a great deal of hysteria over American food imports.
Though not ideal and if you can afford chicken that isn't treated that way than that's surely the way to go I don't think it's as terrible as it sounds. Drinking water can have 4ppm chlorine and these baths have around 30ppm. Being as that you actually drink the water and the chickens just bath in it I'm willing to bet one good gulp of water is gunna put more chlorine into your system than an entire chicken, and thinking you can taste it, I dunno about that......likely worse for you is all the sodium pumped into them after the chlorine bath. When I can I go to the LA meat market and pick out a live chicken and they dispatch it and pluck it for me, not as much meat on them as the store bought but it does feel a lot more natural.
Above-average sensible smell-and taste wise, I hate chlorine in drinking water. It tastes as if there had been wrang (or would that be "wrung"?) out a wet dog´s coat. It´s why coffee and tea will only taste adequately a couple of times per year, here where millions simply drain sewage into the ground (no sewage system despite of sites of ancient culture) and where water management is a desaster. (When chlorine ought to be too expensive, sometimes filling in ammonia, so it seems.)
It´s also why me entirely stopped swimming in Germany´s public baths, since the time that they found it necessary to overly chlorine there. It had / has become extreme.
The worst about euthanizing whole flocks and herds is the futile agony to the animals, I think.
Over here, besides, there seems neither method applied, whether chlorine treatment or euthanasia. (The latter for profit / corruption reasons practically near impossible.) Instead it is apparently relied on the fact that the local cuisine knows no half-cooked or raw meals (like carpaccio alikes) / everything being cooked through. -And if there be atrocities still, it won´t be noticed where under lack of education, hazardous environmental conditions and largely incompetent medics mortality rate is being extremely high anyway.
Yet, to me it is a very strange procedure to bath food in chlorine (just like raying any for keepability. Another blatant carelessness out of all in the USA where jurisdiction can be so fierce on the other hand). What remains there pretty patent in taste (when noticing it decades ago, I had no beforehand info about any such weird procedure; it was just the strange taste in the chicken) certainly will be doing no good to anyone, aside from the circumstance of pity to degrade one of the most tasteful stuffs.
It is rather evident that America´s grocery industry has a strong hold / carte blanche on regulation benchmarks, and instead of exporting that condition as well as further outrageous industrial carte blanches like private arbitration outside from law (being one´s own judge, very funny), ambitions for an expanded US/EU trade could be a chance to improve the situation for US consumers.
However, the procedure in Brussels, with all those attempts of EU accomplices to sneak things through under radar and to hide contents away, demonstrates one other time how bribe and network goes a much too long way to help reason.
Wouldn´t you like a slimeless ham or naturally tasting chicken in your basket? (Many might have forgotten, but it´s delicious!) Even it led to improved life-stock conditions / to prevented water treatments / raised the price a bit (at profit margins maitained, as usually).
Seeing the general pricing level, chicken is still inexpensive in Germany. Only fully naturally raised specimens may cost you around € 15 or 20 per prepared bird. (Which is a very high price, indeed. Then again, I believe that originally chicken was never cheap in times before mass breeding. Think it was rather precious food. Anyone having memories on that?)
BTW, I´m curious to know: Lenny: How much does such a live chicken cost you?
IMO, its effect will be to lower the bar in Europe, not raise it in the US.
Absolutely, that is how things are looking like. I should had inserted the word "instead"* to make clear that I was meaning a useful alternative to the blatant status quo. (* Just had another look; it´s actually there.)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Piwin
Why EU leaders are so intent on joining the bandwagon of unregulated capitalism is beyond me.
A rhetorical wondering. Undoubtedly, you know much too well how politics and private offshore accounts cause each other.
I suspect that the times when official labels and authencity be matching to a considerable degree at least, may be when everyone on planet´s vital remains is in his last gasp, including todays owners of the Cockaigne and their dogsbodies. IOW, too late.
BTW, I´m curious to know: Lenny: How much does such a live chicken cost you?
It's around $15 depending on size compare to about $5 for a chlorine chicken lol 15 is high but It doesn't seem ridiculous when you realize it takes someone about half an hour or more to dispatch, pluck and clean the thing, plus the cost of the caring for it. I have a friend with a farm in riverside, I've been toying with the idea of just making a trip out there once every couple months and getting a young sheep, use every single part of it and make that my soul source of protein. We'll see, I love to talk about being more connected to your food but it's a bit of work and life is busy and hard. It bothers me though that people mindlessly chomp away on animals but would never have the balls to kill one. If you can't accept that you've killed an animal you have no right eating it. Have some respect for the beast that gave its life for you. I'm a total carnivor but I have a lot of respect for vegetarians, they at least are mindful of what they eat.
In the Southeastern USA there is "Virginia" ham. It is so dry and salty that slices are usually soaked in a few changes of fresh water before it is heated and served.
You may be referring to Smithfield Foods, based in Virginia and producer of the iconic holiday "Smithfield Ham," although, speaking personally, I have never found it as dry and salty as suggested above. In 2013 Smithfield Foods was sold to a Chinese company, Shuanghui International. Let's hope the FDA keeps a close eye on the products now being produced under Chinese ownership, as the Chinese have an abysmal record in maintaining and enforcing quality control, at least in products made and produced in China.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
US food industries are hardly examples of 'extremely low safety standards' or 'unregulated capitalism' for that matter.
Seems to me that the EU, still home to the deadliest E. coli outbreak in recent history, (and perhaps the 3rd deadliest listeria outbreak) - at least in the developed world - is not immune from the occasional food safety issue. Neither is the US.
Both are still light years ahead of problems affecting Mexico, China, and India.
One has to keep a sense of balance, considering these issues. Remember too, that there are people out there who just want to destroy things, and have absolutely no idea how they should be replaced. Agriculture and food industries have big fat targets painted on their backs, for reasons that could only appeal to the tin hat brigade, and by people who haven't done so much as grow a carrot.
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