The women ham carvers of Spain

By Jill PetzingerFeatures correspondent

Cinco Jotas Cinco Jotas is a 143-year-old ham company in Spain (Credit: Cinco Jotas)Cinco JotasCinco Jotas is a 143-year-old ham company in Spain (Credit: Cinco Jotas)

Carving legs of Iberian ham in bars, restaurants and at events has traditionally been a man's job. Now, a new generation of women is taking their place at the slicing table.

Jamon iberico – expertly cured ham from the Iberian pig – has been part of Spain's culinary history since Roman times and is arguably the country's most iconic food product. No Spanish event is complete without a carver, a leg of pork and plates of burgundy-red ham laced with creamy, nutty-tasting fat. 

Carvers are respected and celebrated for their skill. It is no mean feat to slice a huge bone-in leg in a way that does justice to the quality of an acorn-fed pig that has been cured for up to three years, by delivering a balance of flavour in every umami-packed mouthful. The huge number of carving competitions in Spain attest to how seriously this job is taken. 

Normally, the hands holding the long, thin knives have been male, for a couple of reasons. Traditionally, men killed and butchered the animals and owned jamonerias (charcuterie shops).

At the same time, waiters in Spain were mostly men, and thus, in charge of slicing ham for customers in restaurants and bars. Many went on to forge independent careers as well-paid cutters. 

The Spanish word for cutter, cortador, did not originally have a female equivalent to describe a woman doing the job. Cortadora was the name for a metal ham-slicing machine. As more women began working in service and hospitality, opportunities to get their hands on a ham opened up. Some of them have become bona-fide stars on the scene.

One of these is Raquel Acosta, 31, one of Spain's most high-profile carvers. She had not originally set her sights on this career, having worked her way up the restaurant ladder, from peeling potatoes to being in charge of the kitchen to culinary school. When a friend mentioned that a ham cutter was looking for someone to work with him, she applied and got the job. 

Josu Acosta Raquel Acosta is one of Spain's most high-profile carvers (Credit: Josu Acosta)Josu AcostaRaquel Acosta is one of Spain's most high-profile carvers (Credit: Josu Acosta)

Acosta remembers looking at her boss flying all over the world to events and thinking: "I want to be like him, I want his job." Ten years later, she owns her own company, is constantly on the road and has even cut ham for actor Robert de Niro.

The native of Burgos in Castile and León province started cooking for her family as a teenager. Helping out in a family of 15 kids, she says, has stood her in good stead. She is now doing more than 250 events a year, many of them food shows or company events.

Acosta gained her chops by participating in competitions and says that overall, her male peers encouraged and supported her to enter. Occasionally, though, she wondered if she had been invited to participate just because they needed to have one woman in the lineup. 

Now the cortadors are jealous of me

"Now the cortadors are jealous of me," Acosta joked. "And I can understand because right now, I have more work than them."

She said that the money at the top can be good, and it can be possible to earn upwards of €1,000 (about £850) for a full-day event, excluding the price of the ham. 

Maria Reyes Mangue Maria Reyes Mangue carves at Madrid's Ten Con Ten restaurant (Credit: Maria Reyes Mangue)Maria Reyes MangueMaria Reyes Mangue carves at Madrid's Ten Con Ten restaurant (Credit: Maria Reyes Mangue)

Acosta is now building up an all-female carving team, partly in response to increased requests from her customers, who say they prefer to see women cutting at their events. She is not sure what is behind this trend, but said to herself, "Okay, Raquel, follow the demand."

The difficulty, she said, is finding carvers who want to commit to a hectic life of working and travelling 40-plus hours a week in some seasons. 

The public-facing aspect of the role puts some women off, according to Maria Castro Bermudez-Coronel, communications director of the 143-year-old ham company Cinco Jotas

"I always want to take women to events, but the problem is that they don't want to go because they feel shy," Bermudez-Coronel said.

Cinco Jotas employs up to 100 people as carvers in the sterile slicing rooms at their base in Jabugo, Huelva province, and maintains a 50-50 female-to-male balance. The company also sends carvers all over the world, but Bermudez-Coronel said it is difficult to encourage women in the cutting department to move abroad for the job, as often they don't want to uproot their families.

Cinco Jotas Cinco Jotas maintains a 50-50 female-to-male balance of ham carvers (Credit: Cinco Jotas)Cinco JotasCinco Jotas maintains a 50-50 female-to-male balance of ham carvers (Credit: Cinco Jotas)

Maria Reyes Mangue's story involves moving in the opposite direction, from Equatorial Guinea to Spain, where the 32-year-old has been working as a cortadora in Madrid for seven years. 

"It was a hard time in Galicia," Mangue said of her early years in Spain as a 21-year-old with a baby son. "I had no papers and even had to look for food in the garbage at night." After two years, she moved to Madrid and found work as a waitress.

"At that time, there weren't many female cutters and I didn't know why," she said. "I became curious."

One day at work, the owner came in and said to Mangue, "Cut me a slice of ham!" He remarked she had a good hand for cutting and the next day pulled her out of waitressing to go on an intensive cutting course. She is now carving at the high-end Ten Con Ten restaurant in the Spanish capital.

Being a black woman in the white, predominantly male carving scene is "not easy", said Mangue, who became a Spanish citizen this year. "A black girl slicing ham in front of the public is pretty unusual."

Maria Reyes Mangue Maria Reyes Mangue from Equatorial Guinea now works as a cortadora in Madrid (Credit: Maria Reyes Mangue)Maria Reyes MangueMaria Reyes Mangue from Equatorial Guinea now works as a cortadora in Madrid (Credit: Maria Reyes Mangue)

"However, part of my work as a cutter is image, and the exoticism and rarity of an African woman doing something as masculine and Spanish as ham cutting is always a draw." She likened it to an African or Asian person distinguishing themselves in flamenco dancing. 

"In the world of ham, I don't think I have had as many limitations for being a woman or African as in my personal life," she added.

In the world of ham, I don't think I have had as many limitations for being a woman or African as in my personal life.

Still, she explains, the professional carving scene is highly competitive, and people can be loath to share tips or leads on how to attract more clients. To be successful, especially if you want to go freelance, it is good to participate in cutting competitions to improve your resumé, she said. Even if you lose, people start to know your face and ask for your details for weddings, baptisms and company events.

The cutting world is certainly much less competitive outside of Spain, where Eva Maria Garcia has been plying her knife for the past six years. The 37-year-old from Madrid did not learn to cut ham until she moved to the UK and started working at Brindisa in London's Borough Market.

"I had a photographic memory for ham cutting, because I always saw my mother and grandfather cutting it," she said. "In my house we would get a ham at Christmas, but I never touched it because my parents were afraid I was going to cut myself, then I came to London and studied in this Spanish shop and they gave me the opportunity."

Josu Acosta Raquel Acosta owns her own ham cutting company (Credit: Josu Acosta)Josu AcostaRaquel Acosta owns her own ham cutting company (Credit: Josu Acosta)

So, what's the secret of the perfect slice? "It has to have the exact measurements and thickness – the thickness of a credit card or thinner – to get all the flavour into your mouth," Garcia said. "That way, you are left with the sensation of melting meat in the mouth on contact with the body's temperature."

Garcia is in the process of launching her own company offering carving services and cutting courses. She was one of the six finalists at the 35th Salon de Gourmets in Spain, the largest food-and-beverage fair for the gastronomy and hospitality sector in Europe. She has sliced at the Spanish Embassy in London and at Royal Ascot earlier this year for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebration. After a week at Ascot cutting two hams a day, "I couldn't feel my fingers," she said.

Women do not carve any differently to men, according to the cortadoras, but every professional, male or female, brings their own energy and creative touch to the cutting and plating. In the end, it is a skill mastered by practice, patience and hundreds of hams.

A handle on ham

A cheat sheet to demystify the different types of Iberian ham:

"Jamón ibérico" describes all ham that has come from pure- or crossbred Iberian pigs from four Designations of Origin areas in Spain: Extremadura, Huelva, Los Pedroches and Guijuelo. 

The cured legs have a strict labelling system of coloured seals that give info on the pigs' breeding, rearing and food. 

Black: The ultimate ham from a purebred Iberian pig that has lived outdoors in oak woods and pastures feasting on acorns. This ham carries the label Jamón de Bellota 100% Ibérico and is the only ham that can legally be called Pata Negra (black foot). (Bellota means "acorn" in Spanish.)

Red: Also a free-range pig, but this one has been crossbred with white pigs, normally Duroc, and shows the percentage of Iberian pig in the mix, normally 50% or 75%. It has fattened up on acorns too, so it gets the label: Jamón de Bellota Ibérico.

Green: Crossbreed pigs that are raised indoors on grain but get a little more space inside than white-label pigs and are able to go outside occasionally. These are labelled Cebo Campo Ibérico.

White: Also a crossbred semi-Iberian pig raised indoors in intensive farming conditions and fed a diet of grain only. This ham is called Cebo Ibérico.

BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.

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