Untitled Document
I have been to the mountaintop. The sanctuary of
smoke. The high temple of porkdom. From the outside, it doesn’t look like a place
of pilgrimage. The modest cinderblock structure, located about 40 minutes
south of Knoxville, Tenn., is a bit dingy. There’s a sign painted on
the outside: “BENTON’S COUNTRY HAMS. WE CURE ’EM.”
A set of prefab concrete steps with a railing so rough that anyone sliding
a hand along it is sure to get splinters leads to a porch with an aging
wooden bench and a battered aluminum screen door. A clutter of papers is
visible in the window to the left. Inside, the first sight is an ancient
refrigerated case with a mundane selection of cold cuts, cheeses, and a
couple of cartons of brown eggs. Jars of honey, sorghum, and molasses sit
on top, and a small table to the side holds bags of white cornmeal. A chest
freezer stands by the cash register. Once you’re inside, however, the
reason for all the publicity, attention, and accolades becomes clear:
It’s the smell. I’d first smelled that aroma months before.
Actually, my husband, Peter, smelled it first. We’d ordered an
assortment of Benton products — ham, bacon, and (unsmoked) prosciutto
— and had it delivered to Peter’s dental office. When it came,
the insulated box was placed on the staff’s break-room table. Within
minutes Peter, working in a room at the opposite corner of the building,
through two closed doors, lifted his head and sniffed, then shouted,
“The Benton order’s here!”
Allan Benton started selling hams and bacon in 1973,
taking over a business established in 1947. The former high-school guidance
counselor wanted to make ham and bacon the way in which he remembered his
grandparents doing it. The fresh pork comes from small farmers who
don’t use prophylactic antibiotics or growth hormones. Most
commercial bacon is processed in as little as a day — first injected
with brine and chemicals, then flashed-smoked. Commercial ham is also
injected with chemicals and water (water’s usually the first
ingredient listed after pork) and similarly processed. At Benton’s,
sides of fresh bacon are first dry-rubbed with salt and brown sugar in a
25-year-old maple box handmade by Benton and his father. (Maple is
preferred because it’s hard, doesn’t splinter, and is low in
acid.) No nitrates are used in the bacon, though regulations have required
their use in some of the ham products. They’re left to rest for six
weeks, first in a 38-degree cooler, next in a 45 degree one, and finally in
an aging room. They’re then smoked for as long 48 hours in the
smoking room, which is equipped with an old wood-burning stove. The smoked
hams go through a similar process, though they’re aged for almost a
year. Benton also makes cured unsmoked hams and has recently begun making
prosciutto (an uncured Italian-style ham), which is aged for 14 months.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Benton and
his hams, prosciutto, and bacon have attained iconic status among chefs and
gourmets around the country. A recent article in Gourmet magazine chronicled
Benton’s first visit to the Big Apple. Top New York chefs had been
using his products for some time, learning of them by word of mouth, but,
except for a few who’d made the trip to Tennessee, most had never met
him. From Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain to trendy barbecue joints in
Chelsea, to some of the hautest of haute cuisine restaurants, chefs asked
his advice and plied him and his wife, Sharon, with some of their most
creative dishes that incorporated his products: grits made with
ham-skin-scented dashi broth, topped with poached egg, ruby shrimp, and crisp bacon;
toasted-corn soup drizzled with scallion purée and topped with
bacon; housemade pasta with fresh peas and ham; and seared diver scallops
surrounded by ham consommé. David Chang, who was named by Food and Wine magazine
one of the Best New Chefs of 2006 and whose tiny restaurant Momofuku is one
of the hottest NYC dining destinations, actually genuflected when Benton
arrived. For Benton, who describes his operation as a “hole in the
wall” business and himself as a “purebred Tennessee
hillbilly,” it was “amazing, just amazing. I had no idea what
[they] were doing with my bacon and ham.” Chang told Benton,
“Your stuff is the ultimate old-school product. We can smell the work
you put into it. Sometimes, when you ship us a ham, we can see the
handprints on the box.”
As good as those elaborate creations are (I first had
Benton ham at Momofuku), to fully appreciate Benton products you should
first sample them on their own. I’ve never really liked country ham
— most has been much too salty for my taste — but
Benton’s is an exception. It’s slightly salty, though no more
so than commercial ham, and the porky flavor is intense, something to be
enjoyed in thin slices rather than thick slabs. The bacon is incredible
— thick slices heavily streaked with mahogany red meat and redolent
of hickory. Then there’s that prosciutto. I feel like a heretic, but
I have honestly never, ever had better — not even from the two leading Italian areas,
Parma and San Daniele. Benton is a modest, even self-deprecating man who
looks a bit like Jimmy Carter. During our visit, he was variously working
in the cluttered business office, moving the wooden racks of hanging hams
or sides of bacon from room to room, and even at one point sweeping the
floor, smiling shyly in our direction as his genial brother-in-law (who
left his engineering job to join the family business) gave us a tour. There
are no reprints of the highly complimentary articles recently published in Gourmet and Saveur magazines on the walls amid
the old calendars, notices, and posters that decorate the front room. Any
other artisanal producer would have them prominently displayed, but
it’s clear that Benton doesn’t need such external
gratification.
There are many other producers of wonderful artisanal
bacons and hams. Among the most highly regarded is Nueske’s, in
Wisconsin. There’s even a Bacon of the Month Club with a (pricey)
monthly selection of artisanal bacons. Locally, Stan Schutte of Triple S
Farms offers excellent bacon (plain and pepper) and smoked pork chops made
from his own naturally raised hogs on Wednesdays at the farmers’
market. (He also has a buyers’ club that delivers monthly to the
Springfield area.) Benton’s has a thriving mail-order business but
has recently been so beset by orders that there’s a two-month
backlog, so order now if you want some world-class bacon to go with those
luscious tomatoes that will start showing up in July or prosciutto to wrap
around slices of succulent melon.
For information about Benton’s Smoky Mountain
Country Hams, go to bentonshams.com or call 423-442-5003. To contact
Nueske’s, go to nueskes.com or call 800-392-2266. Information about
the Bacon of the Month Club can be found at gratefulpalate.com. To contact
Triple S Farms, write to triplsfarm@rr1.net or call 217-895-3652.
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
realcuisine@insightbb.com.
This article appears in May 3-9, 2007.
