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Meat from China

Panxian ham盘县火腿

Panxian ham is a dry-cured pork leg from Guizhou and a Chinese geographical-indication product. The legs are salted three times over three weeks in the cold, rinsed, rested a month, then hung in a warm room for a year or more while staphylococci, yeasts and moulds ripen them.

Fully documentedMeat14 months – 3.1 years

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe amounts are from a Panxian ham factory's standard procedure, as described in two studies. Salt is given as a share of the raw leg weight.
Fresh pork hind legs10–12 kg eachPurebred Pingdi pigs or Pingdi crosses with Landrace or Duroc[mu2019][li2026]
Sea salt8 % of leg weight in total4 % at the first salting, then 2 % at each of the next two[mu2019][li2026]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 14 months – 3.1 years

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
4 °C

What changes: Starting material: fresh pork legs, chilled for a day

Step 1 of 5
Chill and age the fresh legs
Time
24 h
Reported
Temperature
4 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Debaryomyces
Aspergillus

Output: chilled raw legs.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Panxian ham is a dry-cured pork leg from Guizhou and a Chinese geographical-indication product. The legs are salted three times over three weeks in the cold, rinsed, rested a month, then hung in a warm room for a year or more while staphylococci, yeasts and moulds ripen them. Made in 5 steps over 14 months – 3.1 years. The longest step, hang and ripen in the fermentation room, takes 12 months – 3 years (Li H 2022) and runs at 20–22 °C (Mu Y 2019). Salt is 8 % (Mu Y 2019). Staphylococcus and Debaryomyces do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 months – 3 yearsReported[li2022][mu2019][li2026]Hang and ripen in the fermentation room
Temperature20–22 °CReported[mu2019][li2026]Hang and ripen in the fermentation room
Salt8 %Reported[mu2019][li2026]Salt in three rounds in the cold

What makes this one different

Panxian ham is one of China's three protected hams with Jinhua and Xuanwei. It is made from local Pingdi pigs and ripened in a warmer room (20–22 °C) than Speck Alto Adige (10–16 °C).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Traditional household methodChinese Wikipedia describes legs rubbed with corn liquor, stacked, salted and pressed, then washed, sun-dried and shaped, and hung for about a year and a half to two years with cypress-branch smoke. It says the finished ham is shaped like a pipa.
  • Pingdi crossbreedsHams from Pingdi × Landrace lean to fatty and mushroom aromas; Pingdi × Duroc hams build the strongest aged aroma.

Safety

In a sequencing study of Panxian ham processing, spoilage bacteria and some opportunistic organisms (Acinetobacter, Psychrobacter, Brochothrix, Pseudomonas, Ochrobactrum, Macrococcus and Candida) were most common in the early stages. Their relative abundance fell and eventually disappeared during spontaneous ripening, which the authors read as a sign that the final ham is safe. They add that ways to reduce these organisms early in processing are still needed. The study used DNA sequencing and did not test for named food-borne pathogens.

Hazards the sources name: Acinetobacter, Psychrobacter, Brochothrix and Pseudomonas (spoilage bacteria), Ochrobactrum, Macrococcus and Candida (opportunistic or pathogenic in other settings); all present in the raw and early stages and found by DNA sequencing, not by a pathogen test.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Chinese Wikipedia says Panzhou has made the ham for more than 600 years and that it became a Chinese national geographical-indication product on 13 September 2012. The oriGIn product sheet says an expert panel made it the third protected ham, after Yunnan's Xuanwei ham and Zhejiang's Jinhua ham.

  1. [mu2019] Mu Y., Su W., Mu Y., Jiang L. 2019, Combined application of high-throughput sequencing and metabolomics reveals metabolically active microorganisms during Panxian ham processing, Frontiers in Microbiology 10:3012paper
  2. [li2026] Li D., Huang Y., Lv J., Zhao C., Zhang C., Zhang H., Mu Y. 2026, Elucidating the role of genetic background in shaping the flavor characteristics of Panxian dry-cured ham, Food Chemistry Xpaper
  3. [mu2026] Mu Y., Li D., Deng X. et al. 2026, Effects of region and ripening on the physicochemical properties, microbiome, metabolome, and volatilome of Chinese dry-cured ham, Food Chemistry Xpaper
  4. [li2022] Li H., Wu J., Wan J., Zhou Y., Zhu Q. 2022, Extraction and identification of bioactive peptides from Panxian dry-cured ham with multifunctional activities, LWT 160:113326 (abstract)paper
  5. [origin-gi] oriGIn, Panxian ham (盘县火腿) GI product sheet, after AQSIQweb
  6. [s1] Chinese Wikipedia, 盘县火腿 (traditional method outline only)wiki