The best cooked ham in Italy? It's Cotto '60 Branchi di Felino, followed by Nustràn produced in the province of Cremona. And Rovagnati is the best of those in trays

The Branchi company from Felino wins the gold medal in a blind tasting by Gambero Rosso experts. The ranking of the top products in high-end food shops and large-scale retail trade products in trays

With a beautiful pink color, with well-distributed fat that melts in the mouth, perfect level of humidity, salted manually without refined sugars and flavorings, both natural and artificial, but worked with a top quality honey and a ribollita of spices: it is produced in Felino, the small agricultural center in the province of Parma that has linked its name to the famous salami of the same name, the best cooked ham in Italy. To produce “Cotto 60” which a Gambero Rosso jury has placed at the top of Italian quality is the family-run company Branchi, active in the pork sector since the immediate post-war period, when Erminio Branchi converted a small canning company into a ham curing company. Later, his son Franco continued the business and was the first to start processing cooked ham in the Parma area. Today the company is run by Tito Branchi and his children Franco Giovanni and Carlotta.

In second position, according to the opinion of the Gambero Rosso experts, Nustràn by Italprosciutti, high quality cooked ham produced with meats “made in Lombardy” by a company with over 35 years of experience in meat processing, attentive to pig genetics, nutrition and the territory. In third position we find theAnthony of I Cottinforno, the cooked ham dedicated to the founder produced by the Parma-based company specializing in cooked and roast ham, founded in 1986.

The production of cooked ham reached 292.800 tons, +1% in volume and +7,7% in value, equal to 2.280 million euros

Cooked ham has been gaining increasing popularity for some time now and is confirmed as one of the most loved and popular cured meats, to be eaten as is or added to recipes, thanks to its delicate flavour, versatility in the kitchen, ease of consumption and digestibility. This is also confirmed by Istat data according to which in 2023 the production of cooked ham reached 292.800 tons, with a growth of 1% in volume and a +7,7% in value, equal to 2.280 million euros, thanks to a domestic demand that remains solid and to the good results of that foreign, which grows with a +6,1% in quantity and +12,2% in turnover.

But how can you distinguish quality cooked ham? “The legislation does it first and foremost, classifying cooked ham into three different types that reflect specific requirements: Cooked Ham, High Quality Cooked Ham, Selected Cooked Ham,” comments Mara Nocilla of Gambero Rosso.

La blind tasting of 60 samples involved 22 premium cooked hams from all over Italy and it has also extended to 38 large-scale retail products in trays, which were evaluated for the best performance in terms of sight, but above all in terms of smell, taste, aromatic profile and structure. And here is the top five of the two rankings created by a panel of expert tasters, drawn up at the Gambero Rosso Academy.