Spanish · Starter
Croquetas de Jamón
- Advanced
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle.
Ingredients
- 80g butter, 100g flour
- 800ml whole milk, warm
- 100g jamón or ham, minced fine
- Nutmeg, salt
- Flour, 2 eggs, panko for breading
- Oil for frying
Equipment
Sheet pan · Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
Béchamel: the mother sauceMaking a rouxThe coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter
The words inside
Jamón Ibérico (and the Bellota Grades)Roux, Slurry & LiaisonNutmeg & Mace
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Make a blond roux; whisk in milk gradually into a THICK béchamel, 15 min of stirring. 15 min
- Fold in ham; spread in a tray, press film onto the surface; chill 4h+. 240 min
- Shape logs; bread twice (egg, panko, egg, panko).
- Fry at 185°C in small batches until deep gold, ~2 min. 2 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Making a roux 32 recipes
- Taken to the stage the dish named and no further, judged against that colour (pale, blond, or brown to brick), and it got there slowly enough to have coloured evenly.
- It is smooth and mobile: a paste with no dry pockets of flour and no lumps, loosening as it warms rather than sitting stiff in the pan.
- The raw-flour smell has gone and been replaced by the toasted, biscuity smell of its stage, with nothing acrid behind it.
- No black specks anywhere. One scorched fleck condemns the batch; it cannot be stirred back in and it will be tasted in the finished sauce.
- Let down into liquid it goes smooth without lumps and thickens to the body the dish wants, leaving no floury taste on the tongue.
Where it goes wrong The heat was too high and the corners of the pan went unstirred, so it scorched at the edge; black specks run through the finished sauce and carry a bitterness that no amount of seasoning covers.
The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter 80 recipes
- The coat is continuous before it goes anywhere near the fat: held up to the light, no bare patch of food shows through anywhere, seams and thin edges included.
- It is bonded rather than resting on top: a gentle shake sheds loose dust only, and the coat does not slide off as a sheet when the piece is handled.
- It bubbles hard and steadily from the moment it enters the fat, and the bubbling visibly slows as it finishes; those bubbles are the surface water leaving, and a quiet entry means the fat is too cool.
- Out and drained, it is an even gold-brown all over and it is still crisp several minutes later on a rack; a coat that softens within a minute of coming out never lost its water.
- Broken open, there is no paste of raw flour under the crust and no hollow gap where the coat has lifted away from the food.
Where it goes wrong The fat was below temperature or the pan was crowded, so the coat drank fat instead of sealing against it: it comes out pale and heavy, greasy to the fingers, and slumps off the food as it cools.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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