Prosciutto Crudo – Italian Ham

Prosciutto Crudo with thirty months of patience

Prosciutto Crudo is air-dried Italian ham made from two ingredients: pork and salt. This particular one is aged for thirty months in the Devodier cellars near Parma and arrives thinly sliced and layered in waves.

The Prosciutto Crudo from Devodier is an air-dried Italian ham from Emilia-Romagna, sliced and vacuum-packed. The ingredient list contains two things: 95 percent pork, 5 percent salt. Nothing else—no nitrite, no sugar, no smoke. What creates the flavor is the thirty months that follow.

Two ingredients and thirty months of time

A raw ham needs nothing but salt, cool air, and a great deal of time. The ham does everything else itself while it hangs.

After salting, the meat rests, is washed, and then moves into the aging cellars, where it dries slowly throughout the seasons. In the process, proteins break down, free amino acids are formed, and from this comes that deep, nutty-sweet spice that distinguishes a long-aged ham from a young one. Devodier offers 24, 30, and 36 months; this one is in the middle.

As a result, the meat is dark red and almost translucent, the fat rim ivory-colored and soft. It melts on the tongue rather than being chewed, and it tastes salty, nutty, and has a long finish. You don't hear thirty months, but you taste them.

When sliced, it is laid out loosely in waves instead of being stacked flat so that the slices can be lifted individually without sticking together. With 27 grams of protein and 16 grams of fat per 100 grams, the ham is also strongly seasoned: it contains 4.6 grams of salt, so you should season everything else on the plate sparingly accordingly.

On bread, with melon, over warm pasta

The ham needs no accompaniment. A piece of white bread, a glass of red wine, a few slices from the pack—that's all it takes.

It goes classically with melon or fig, where the sweetness plays against the salt, with young Pecorino and breadsticks, or as an antipasto alongside pickled vegetables. On a board with a fennel salami and a few olives, you have an appetizer ready in two minutes.

It unfolds differently when warm: placed over freshly drained spaghetti, where the residual heat melts the fat, or added to a pizza bianca at the end. You just shouldn't cook it with the dish, or it will become tough and lose exactly what took thirty months to achieve. Take it out of the refrigerator a quarter of an hour before eating; it only tastes half as good cold.

Devodier in the hills of Lesignano

The Devodier family has been in animal husbandry since 1700; butchery and awards were added in the 19th century, and curing and aging have been practiced since the beginning of the 20th century.

In the 1950s, Enrico Devodier moved up into the hills of Lesignano de' Bagni and built the old cellars there, where the aging still takes place today. In 1963, he was one of the founders of the Parma Ham Consortium. Today, his son Luigi runs the company, with the historic headquarters in Lesignano and a second facility in Pilastro di Langhirano, where slicing has taken place since 2007.

You can see that the family thinks in the long term on the roof: a large photovoltaic system, a solar system for hot water, and heavily insulated roof panels. In 2024, Devodier was named the best prosciutto producer in Italy at the Italy Food Awards, and Gambero Rosso lists the thirty-month ham as an "Eccellenza." It is brought to the German shelf by Antonio Viani; more ham can be found under Ham. Two ingredients, two and a half years. It hardly gets more artisanal than this.