Krčki pršut

Appearance & taste

The ham is domed with rounded corners. The shank is removed, rind and subcutaneous fat are kept, while the visible muscle is not covered with fat. Below the head of the femur at most 12 cm of muscle is exposed. Cracks that form during ripening may be filled with a mixture of pork fat, wheat or rice flour, sea salt and ground pepper. A finished ham weighs over 6.5 kg.

When cut, the meat is evenly pinkish-red to red and marbled with white fat. It is soft and easy to slice, and it must not have a hard, dark rind. The ham tastes sweet and slightly salty, with the mild aroma of long-ripened, dried pork without any smoky aroma. It contains 40 to 60 % water and 4 to 8 % salt.

It is sold as a whole ham or boned, in pieces or in slices, then vacuum- or modified-atmosphere-packed. After the checks, every ham receives the brand of the collective mark; the words “Krčki pršut” must be more prominent on the label than all other information.

Production

Fresh legs from pigs of common commercial meat breeds and their crosses are used. All pelvic bones are removed; only the cartilaginous part of the ischium remains. The meat is rounded off in a semicircle, and the shank is cut off at the hock joint; the ham is hung up to dry by the heel bone. The fresh meat must be reddish to pinkish-red, firm and dry on the surface. The fat layer measures about 25 mm, with rind at least 15 mm, and the trimmed ham weighs at least 12 kg. It is not preserved in any way other than chilling; 24 to 120 hours pass between slaughter and salting.

The ham is dry-salted with sea salt and with pepper, rosemary and bay leaf, pressed, dried in the air and ripened. It is not smoked. At least 12 months pass from the first salting to the finished ham. All steps take place on Krk. Traditionally, salting begins in the cold season from November to March.

Origin & history

The ham is made only on the island of Krk, in the town of Krk and the municipalities of Baška, Malinska-Dubašnica, Omišalj, Punat and Vrbnik; the small neighbouring islands of Košljun, Prvić and Plavnik are excluded. The climate is temperate, humid and warm with hot summers. The most important factor for drying is the wind: the bora, a dry, cold wind from the east-north-east and north-east, blows mainly in winter. Then the air is cold and dry enough for the meat not to spoil, to dry without smoke and to ripen slowly. Sea salt was easy to obtain.

According to the specification, pigs were already kept and salted on Krk in the Middle Ages, and until the middle of the 20th century every well-off family salted its own pork. Giambattista Cubich described the salting of pork on the island in 1874, I. Žic the slaughter and salting of pršut in Vrbnik in 1901, and a recipe book of the Franciscan monastery of Košljun contains an old recipe for pork ham. Because of the poor connection to the mainland, according to the specification a method developed that differs in some steps from that in Istria and Dalmatia.

With tourism, the ham became much better known from the middle of the 20th century; it was one of the few local products that could meet the demand in quantity and quality. At the same time the number of fattening farms on the island declined, and the legs increasingly came from the mainland. Since the mid-1990s restaurants have listed it as “Krčki pršut” instead of as pršut from the region.