My first Parma-style ham was a wild boar leg of about five kilos (11 lb). I salted it, sealed it, hung it, and left it alone. Five months later it had reached its target weight on the Meatdryer hook, and it was ready to slice.
I cut it with a sharp knife, as thin as I could. It was delicious, but the slices were nowhere near as even as the ones a professional gets. For my second ham I bought a Berkel slicer, a beautiful piece of red machinery. Once I had taken the meat off the bone, I could finally cut the thin, even slices we all know from the charcuterie counter.
A whole ham is maybe not your first project. But it is well worth mastering, and it is easier than you think. It just needs time.
That is the short answer to how to make prosciutto at home: a leg, a lot of salt, a cold place, patience, and a way of knowing when it is done. The long answer is below, from choosing the leg to slicing it, with the Parma way and the home way side by side. Everything else you need for curing and charcuterie at home is collected in one place.
A real Prosciutto di Parma takes at least 14 months. Don't let that put you off. Time follows weight, and a 15 kg (33 lb) Parma leg and a 5 kg (11 lb) boar leg are simply different jobs.
Before you start: what you are taking on
Three things, and only one of them costs money.
- Time. Expect about five months for a 5 kg (11 lb) leg and a year or more for a 15 kg (33 lb) one. Treat that as an indication only. Your humidity changes it, and the hook tells you when it's done, not the calendar.
- A cold place for the salt. Parma salts its legs at 1–4°C (34–39°F). A fridge big enough for a leg, or a cellar in the cold months, does the same job.
- Somewhere to hang it for months. Cool, airy, dark and out of reach of flies. A cellar, an outbuilding or an unheated room all work if you can keep an eye on the conditions.
This is why legs have always been salted in the cold part of the year. Start in late autumn or winter and the weather does half the work for you.
Choosing the leg
You want a whole hind leg with the skin on and the bone in, from a pig or a wild boar. Our own ham recipe in the app works with legs from 4 to 13 kg (9–29 lb). Parma legs arrive at the curing houses weighing around 15 kg (33 lb) on average.
The skin and fat are your protection. They slow the drying on every side except the exposed meat face, which is where most of the moisture leaves. So pick a leg with good, even fat cover and no deep knife cuts through the skin.
Trim it lightly so the surface is smooth, with no loose flaps or pockets where salt can't reach and moisture can hide. If the animal is your own, our guide to butchering deer, wild boar and moose at home shows where the leg comes off. A wild boar leg is leaner and smaller than a farmed pig's, which is exactly why it dries faster, and it needs one extra step before you salt it. More on that under safety.
How to make prosciutto: salting the leg
Salt is the whole cure. Use plenty of coarse salt and work it into every fold, around the exposed end of the bone and into the hip joint. These are the places where salt struggles to reach and where a cure goes wrong from the inside, so give them extra care.
How long depends on weight. The rule most home curers use, and the one in our app recipe, is about one day per kilo (2.2 lb). Some go up to two days per kilo for a saltier ham. Parma works in two rounds: a first salting of about a week, then a second of 15 to 18 days depending on the weight of the leg.
- Keep it at 1–4°C (34–39°F) the whole time.
- Put it in a container that can take the brine the salt draws out.
- Press it. One home method uses a weight of about twice the leg.
- Turn it and top up the salt every few days.
Parma uses sea salt and nothing else: no nitrites, no nitrates. Some home curers add curing salt to a whole leg for extra security. Our app recipe uses salt only. If you want to add curing salt, follow a recipe that gives you a precise dose. It is not something to guess at.
Resting: the step a small leg can shorten
After salting, Parma rests its legs for 60 to 90 days in refrigerated rooms at 75% humidity. The salt spreads from the surface to the centre of a thick leg while it is kept cold.
The home methods we compared, including our app recipe, skip the long rest and go straight from the salt to the rinse. A 5 kg (11 lb) boar leg is a lot thinner than a 15 kg (33 lb) Parma leg, and the salt has less far to travel.
Washing, drying and the first hang
Rinse off the salt with cold water, pat the leg dry, then wipe it down with vinegar. Parma washes its legs with warm water and brushes them, then lets them dry for a few days before the long hang.
Thread an accessory hook through the flesh close to the edge of the bone and hang the leg from the Meatdryer. It holds the weight steady, which is what makes the measurements accurate. Put a protective net over it from the first day. A fly only needs one visit.
Sealing the face with lard
The skin looks after itself. The exposed meat face does not, and left bare it dries faster than the inside can follow.
Parma seals it with a paste of minced lard and salt, called sugna, before the final months of curing. Home curers use the same idea with what is to hand: equal parts soft lard and rice flour is one common version, and some add black pepper. Spread it thin and even over the bare meat once the surface has firmed up.
Ageing: where to hang it
Cool, airy and dark. Most home guides hang their hams at around 13°C (55°F) and 65–80% humidity. Our app recipe works across 4–18°C (39–64°F) and 40–70%, because real cellars and outbuildings move with the seasons.
What you're avoiding is either extreme. Too dry and the outside hardens before the inside has given up its water, trapping moisture in the middle. Too damp and mould grows faster than you can wipe it. A little air moving past the leg keeps the surface honest.
This is the long, quiet part. Check the net, look for mould, and let the hook keep the log of temperature, humidity and weight while you get on with the year.
How you know it's ready
By weight, not by date. As the leg dries it loses water, and the weight lost is the most reliable measure you have.
- Parma legs lose more than a quarter of their weight.
- The home guides we trust aim for about 30%.
- Our app recipe targets 65% of the starting weight, so 35% lost.
My boar leg got there in five months. A 15 kg (33 lb) leg in the same place would take well over a year. Those are indications. Your cellar's humidity changes them, and that's why a scale you can read every day beats any calendar.
Parma's 14 months is counted from the first day of salting, and the last months are mostly about flavour: the consortium says a leg loses only about 5% of its weight in the final curing phase. Once you've reached your target, leaving it longer on the hook is a choice, not a requirement.
What can go wrong
- Salt that never reached the bone. The gaps around the bone and the hip joint are where a cure fails from the inside. Pack them properly at the start. You can't fix it later.
- A hard outside and a soft middle. The leg dried too fast, usually because the air was too dry or moving too hard. Raise the humidity and slow it down.
- Mould. Some white mould is normal and harmless, especially in a slightly damp room. Scrape it off gently or wipe it with vinegar. Green or black mould is a different matter, and that meat should not be eaten.
- Flies. The net goes on the day the leg goes up and stays on.
A word on safety. Wear gloves, keep everything clean and hang the leg somewhere well ventilated. If you cure wild boar, have the meat tested for trichinella first. In Sweden that test is mandatory for boar meat that is sold. The Swedish veterinary institute SVA warns that freezing does not reliably kill the parasite in wild boar; its advice is to heat the whole piece to 68°C (154°F). A cured ham is never heated, so the test is your only protection. Curing and eating meat is always done at your own risk. If you are unsure about anything, don't eat it.
Parma, San Daniele, Serrano, Bayonne
The famous hams are the same idea under different rules. Their names are protected, so what you make at home is a Parma-style ham, never a Parma ham. You can copy the method but not the name.
| Ham | Where | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|
| Prosciutto di Parma | The hills around Parma, Italy | Sea salt only, no nitrites or nitrates, sealed with lard and salt, at least 14 months |
| Prosciutto di San Daniele | Friuli, Italy | Salt only, with the trotter left on and the leg pressed into its flattened shape |
| Jamón serrano | Spain | From white pigs, cured with salt in the cool, dry air of the mountains |
| Jamón ibérico | Spain and Portugal | From Iberian breed pigs; the finest, bellota, from pigs finished on acorns |
| Jambon de Bayonne | The Adour basin, France | Salted with salt from Salies-de-Béarn, often rubbed with Espelette pepper |
Our own ham recipe in the app takes the Spanish route with a twist: smoked paprika rubbed over the leg before it hangs.
If a whole leg is too much
Then don't start with one. A single muscle teaches you the same things, salt, weight and patience, in a fraction of the time and space. A cured pork loin or a beef bresaola is a good first project, and both are in the app. Hang one this winter and you'll know your cellar before you trust it with a whole leg.
Slicing and serving
Take the skin off only the part you are about to slice, and cut as thin as you can manage, across the grain. If you have a slicer, take the meat off the bone first. When you're done, cover the cut face with a piece of its own fat or a smear of lard so it doesn't dry out. Serve it at room temperature, never straight from the fridge.
In Spain, a cortador de jamón is someone you hire, not something you buy: a professional carver booked for weddings and parties, who can take a whole leg down to paper-thin slices in front of the guests. You don't need one. A long, sharp knife and a steady hand will do.
Shop the essentials
Everything you need to hang a whole leg and know when it's ready.
- Meatdryer Hook – Tracks weight, temperature and humidity and tells you when your ham has reached its target.
- Accessory Hook – Holds a heavy leg steady on the Meatdryer for accurate measurements.
- Protective Net – Keeps flies and insects off the leg for the months it hangs.
