How to correctly slice a ham?

It seems easy, but when it comes to getting down to work, you will find that not everyone manages to master this art. You should have a lot of patience, but yes, the reward of being able to enjoy a good ham sliced by you with your family, is often the best prize.
Today, we give you a few instructions to face the slicing of a ham without fear. Let’s start!

To start, you will need a ham holder that allows you to place the ham in a correct position to make easier the slicing the ham. You have them in many varieties, choose the one that best suits your tastes. You should also have a paring knife, that is, a medium-bladed knife with a pointed end and very sharp, which will allow you to clean the fat with which the ham leg is coated.

You must place the ham with the hoof up or down. This will basically depend on how long it will take to consume it, since depending on the position of the hoof you will be started by one part or another with different characteristics. For example, we are going to choose to start with the contra or babilla. (with hoof facing down).

Once the fat is cleaned from the area, and with the knife as horizontal as possible, we will start slicing. (We indicate that the knife should be as horizontal as possible, because this will prevent the ham leg from acquiring that concave shape known as smile or boat, which gives rise to areas that will dry prematurely, as they are exposed irregularly) . You should also pay special attention to making short and slow cuts, which allow you to extract thin slices with the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Remember, at all times, that your hand should always be at a different height from the knife, and if possible behind it, to avoid possible cuts.

Little by little, you will be obtaining a good number of slices … this will depend on the speed you acquire by cutting and testing them at the same time, which is already known, ham slices are irresistible !, so the next step will be plating. You can do it to taste, but we suggest you start placing the slices in a circular way from the outside of the plate and gradually grouping them to the center of it.

We hope that our instructions help you lose the fear of starting to slice your Iberico ham. And above all we hope you enjoy its magnificent flavor, either alone or accompanied.

See you in the next post!