HAM OR BACON

HAM and Bean soup (the kind with some tomato in it)

Penne al Carbonara(bacon AND Sopresseta)

Risi a Bisi (bacon and only bacon)

Shrimp wrapped with bacon an egg dip fried and covered ith a Zichuan sauce

HAM n STRING BEANS (Comfort ood of all comfort foods)

Ya know, mot of my recollections of both these meat groups is that they are best when used as a flavoring

I love bacon but I’ve never really been a fan of ham, although I do like to make a ham and white bean soup with celery and carrots. Yummy!

I used to take care of a friend's kids on occasion. They always wanted to order the same pizza .... triple cheese, fresh garlic, roasted garlic, bacon.

It was pretty good. Once I added olives it became stellar.

<swoon>

I really dislike a whole slab of ham as a dinner entree.
When my family escaped from Russia as jew turned Chritian, they started eating hams by the ton.
My buha used to make bigass slabs o ham with horseradish with boiled potatoes served up with sour creme. (GAAAAG)

Don't put no sour cream on any of my food.

Bacon. Even better... Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich with Mayo (fresh lettuce and Tomato of course). Damn, now I need to go to the store and buy some Tomato's.

So much of ham is salt water filled crap, So I have to go with bacon.

Ours was ordered from one of the Carolinas, I think, or maybe a shop that sold that kind of ham. And my cousins didn't serve whole huge slabs, just a reasonable slice cooked just right. I remember good boston baked beans as a side.

Back to bacon, if we're going to be picky, I'd like to recheck real italian pancetta. Different process than ours, and it would be hard for me to choose.
If I get to have more, gimme real italian prosciutto (although I haven't tried the american La Quercia, said to be good. And Mario Batali's father also produces it, I think, up in Washington State.

http://www.igourmet.com/prosciutto.asp
Each region of Italy produces Prosciutto, using varied drying times and more or less salt which results in a wide range of aromas and flavors. Prosciutto di San Daniele is also a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) product from the Friuli region of Italy. It is even sweeter and darker in color with a more delicate flavor than Prosciutto di Parma. Prosciutto di San Daniele is made with local sea salt and the hams are stacked on top of each other during the curing process. Prosciutto Toscano (PDO) comes from the Tuscany region of Italy and rather than sweetness it has a savory flavor due to the addition of such seasonings and herbs like garlic, rosemary and juniper.

There's something I wished I'd gotten to try - Culatello di Zibello, a salami from Parma -
http://www.parmagourmet.it/en/culatello.htm

Unless it's smoked like Serrano, Black Forest or Prosciutto, I won't touch ham. It's bacon then...

I do love Prosciutto but my best memory of ham is eating a small tray of Black Forest Ham in Furtwangen im Schwarzwald and then going to see the German Clock Museum. What a day that was.

And I loved Parma. I went there for two reasons - to research the key piazzas and to eat. Favorite place was both a salumaria and a good restaurant run by a nice family, name Le Sorelle Picchi, trattoria sisters. It was hard to walk out from the restaurant through the room with the long case with all the available foodstuffs.

Good old ham hocks in butterbeans.

When you folks mentioned unprocessed ham, are you talking about fresh pork? Not cured or smoked? I like a fresh ham, which is what I look for around Easter or big gatherings. The best ones are around 15 + pounds, and bakes for many hours! I pour either a cup of chicken broth or water ever 30-45 minutes and it makes the best gravy. I'm not very fond of cured ham, unless sliced very thin for sammies. Roasted fresh ham has so much flavor, I look for excuses to serve it.

Coincidentally, I've visited with some (A2K-) friends yesterday the Westphalian Ham Museum (as well as the adjoining Westphalian Beer, Bread and Cheese Museum).

Bella says she'll need a little more ham and a little more bacon before she can make up her mind.

Indubitably bacon, given a choice, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at any variety of ham. The US version of bacon, though, no how good it tastes, has waaayyy too high of a fat:lean ratio and enough sodium to drop a steer. There's a brand of bacon here in Korea where they've righted both of those problems, as well as making it about 1/4" thick. Only problem is, it just doesn't have that smoked flavor.

Wow . . . no one mentioned Korean style bacon was there. Is this traditional, or a recent development?

Recent. When I first got here, there was none to be found outside a few black market shops in Itaewon. I think the bacon concept came in with the fast food burger joints. Now it's a thing here.

Smithfield hams are cured in so much salt that you have to soak em for a week before theyre even slightly edible. They swell up 5 times, so much so that they cant be extracted from the pot without lard.
Smithfield hams are good with butterbeans and taters. (thats about it).
They make a breakfast ham from the Smithfields that is used mostly for the salt in a pot likker or a white gravy (with biskits)