Ammerländer Schinken – or Ammerländer Knochenschinken – is a type of
dry-cured and
smoked ham
Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term '' ...
produced in the
Ammerland
Ammerland is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by (from the east and clockwise) the city of Oldenburg and the districts of Oldenburg, Cloppenburg, Leer, Friesland and Wesermarsch.
History
The "Ammerland" was first mention ...
Rural District of North
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. Ammerländer Knochenschinken contains the bone, is heavily spiced and has a dark smoked color. Ammerländer Schinken is boneless, lightly spiced and lightly smoked. Historically, the ham was made from Ammerländer Edelschwein, a local breed of pigs. Today, the ham can also be made from pigs bred or fattened in the Ammerland Rural District. Both types of ham have
PGI status under
EU law
European Union law is a system of Supranational union, supranational Law, laws operating within the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). It has grown over time since the 1952 founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, to promote ...
.
The raw meat used in its production is
cured for three weeks by being rubbed with a dry mixture of
sea salt
Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or simply salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea sal ...
and
brown sugar
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content or produced by t ...
, and sometimes a spice mixture of
juniper
Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south ...
,
pepper and
allspice
Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of ''Pimenta dioica'', a midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America, now cultivated in many warm par ...
. The ham is then
cold-smoked over
beechwood for several weeks, and finally aged for a period of up to two years.
The oldest Ammerland ham smokehouse was founded in 1748 in
Apen. It is now a museum named the Ammerländer Schinkenmuseum.
See also
*
List of hams
*
List of smoked foods
This is a list of smoked foods. Smoking (cooking), Smoking is the process of seasoning, flavoring, cooking, or food preservation, preserving food by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. Foods have been smoke ...
References
External links Ammerländer SchinkenmuseumEuropean Commission: Geographical indications and quality schemes explained
Ham
Smoked meat
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