Great prosciutto doesn’t have to come from Italy

Having posted yesterday about lab-grown hamburgers, we wanted to bring the discussion around full circle, and this New York Times article about a small Iowa farm producing prosciutto that rivals that from Parma does the trick. In Some Prosciutto Fans Turn to Iowa, they ask the question: “Would people buy prosciutto from a guy named Herb from Iowa?”

The answer is a resounding yes, “Mr. Eckhouse and his wife, Kathy, began producing La Quercia Prosciutto Americano eight years ago in a plant they built here, just south of Des Moines. The meat has drawn enthusiastic reviews and is on the menus of upscale restaurants and in shops in New York, Chicago and the Bay Area. Some Whole Foods Markets and Costco stores stock it.” And having tasted the product turning a taste test at Cook’s Illustrated, we can verify that it is, indeed, great prosciutto.

We’re pretty certain that while all our readers are not in agreement about lab-produced food, all of our readers applaud people like the Eckhouses’ who have a dream about how to produce wonderful food in a conscientious fashion and pursue it. Bravo!