Presunto de Barroso
Barroso, Tras-os-Montes, Portugal
A PGI mountain ham of Tras-os-Montes, cold-cured and lightly smoked.
Overview
Presunto de Barroso is a pgi mountain ham of tras-os-montes, cold-cured and lightly smoked. A red to red-brown mountain ham with off-white fat and a clean restrained smoke. It should be firm and savoury without soot or rancidity. The Codex treats the product as a complete curing or cooking system, not simply a famous name. Raw material, cut or particle size, casing, smoke, fermentation, heat treatment and maturation all contribute to the result. The current legal or quality status is IGP / PGI. The source tradition and the Curesmith home method are kept separate.
Where it's from
Climate. The high, cold Barroso of Tras-os-Montes.
Altitude. Northern mountains
The cut
How to recognise it
A red to red-brown mountain ham with off-white fat and a clean restrained smoke. It should be firm and savoury without soot or rancidity. A hard outer ring, wet grey centre, rancid fat, sourness or air beneath casing indicates an uneven cure.
- Shape and size
- Whole bone-in leg
- Lean colour
- Deep red
- Fat and marbling
- White
- Casing
- None
- Surface bloom
- Possible
Origins and history
A mountain ham of the Barroso in Tras-os-Montes, made in the cold, high north-east of Portugal and, in the regional manner, lightly smoked. It holds a PGI and is traditionally made from local breeds, cured in the thin mountain air. It is firmer and smokier than the Alentejo hams of the south. Barroso's long winters, high altitude and wood-fired farmhouses created a northern Portuguese ham that is firmer and smokier than southern Alentejo hams. Pig keeping was embedded in mixed subsistence farming. Legends and commercial origin stories are identified as such rather than used as proof of the current specification.
Name. Presunto; Barroso the highland region.
- Production today
- Producers in the Barroso highlands.
- Protection
- IGP/PGI, registered 1996.
- Tradition vs modern
- Lightly smoked mountain curing.
- Seasonality
- Traditionally winter-salted.
Compare with. Presunto de Barrancos, Jambon de Savoie
Serving and cultural significance
Sliced thin, gently smoky. Retain the PGI and current pig-age and feeding description. Keep the protected traditional process separate from the Curesmith Cure #2 adaptation. it shows how place, material and process create identity. The reader can compare authenticity, legal status and practical home safety without confusing them. Serve thinly with rye bread, potatoes, greens or northern Portuguese wine, keeping the smoke subordinate to the pork.
Recipe and cure
This is not a finished recipe. It is a window into how this meat is traditionally cured. Before you follow any process, please run it through one of our curing calculators, so the salt, cure and timings are right and safe for your own batch.
Curesmith home adaptation — not designation-compliant
Make this — the measured Curesmith version →The cure below is the traditional reference. “Make this” opens the measured Curesmith home recipe, scaled to your batch.
Traditional or protected production
Presunto de Barroso PGI is made from legs or shoulders of pigs slaughtered at approximately sixteen to eighteen months and traditionally fed from farm and household resources. The product is cured in the cold Barroso highlands and may be sold whole, boned, in pieces or sliced.
Sea salt; lightly smoked in the regional manner. Salt-box method; no fixed percentage.
- Meat
- pork
- Salt (%)
- traditional, no fixed %
- Curing salt
- Sea salt; lightly smoked in the regional manner.
- Fermented
- No
- Starter or mould
- Possible
- Smoked
- Yes
- Target aW or weight loss
- ~ weight loss
- Temperature (°C)
- cold salting, then 10 to 15
- Humidity (%)
- 70 to 80
- Maturation
- 7 to 12 months and up
- Basis
- percentage of green meat weight
- Style
- Traditional dry salting (salt-box), then cold-smoked
Method
- Salt the leg by the traditional method and rest cold.
- Brush off surface salt and rub with the spice mix where used.
- Cold-smoke where traditional, then air-dry.
- Age to the target loss.
Notes
- The official protected specification controls the named product. Any Curesmith EQ, starter-culture, curing-salt or home-scale adaptation is a separate method and must not be presented as designation-compliant.
- A more efficient way of curing this product is using the EQ Method. No more than 2.5% salt to meat weight is required. To follow the EQ method, please use our whole-muscle EQ curing calculator to work out proper ratios and curing times.
In the Codex
What this product teaches, and where to read more.
Temple. Roof, Microclimate