Culatello substitute

Best substitute

Prosciutto di Parma, 24 Months or Older

Use the same amount by weight as the culatello you are replacing

Best for antipasto plates

Close match

The closest realistic substitute for culatello is a well-aged prosciutto di Parma, ideally 24 months or older, at 1:1 by weight. Prosciutto di San Daniele is a touch sweeter and softer, and jamon iberico is arguably closer in aroma if you can afford it. Culatello's job on the plate is salt, melting fat and perfume, so match the aroma rather than the shape, and accept that no supermarket product has its damp-cellar depth.

Other culatello substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Prosciutto di San Daniele
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
From Friuli rather than Emilia, pressed flat during curing, and generally sweeter and more delicate than Parma.
What changes
Best for
antipasto plates, with bread and butter, with cheese, salads
The sweetness and softer, silkier bite land closer to culatello than Parma does, and it is less aggressively salty. What it lacks is culatello's density and the deep rose-to-mahogany colour, so the plate looks paler and each slice feels lighter in the mouth.
3Fiocco or Culaccia
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
Fiocco is the other half of the same hind leg once the culatello muscle has been removed, and culaccia is essentially culatello left with its rind on.
What changes
If a specialty counter has either, stop looking.
Best for
antipasto plates, anywhere culatello is called for
As close as it is possible to get without buying culatello itself: same animal, same region, same curing tradition. Fiocco is slightly leaner and less perfumed because it ages for a shorter time, so it is a little firmer and more prosciutto-like. Neither is easy to find outside Italy or a serious salumeria.
4Jamon Iberico de Bellota
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Spanish rather than Italian, but the nutty, deeply aromatic, dissolving-on-the-tongue quality is arguably nearer to culatello than an ordinary prosciutto is.
What changes
Best for
tasting plates, eaten alone with bread, with sherry or a Tuscan red
Distinctly nuttier and more savoury than culatello, with acorn-fed richness and yellow, liquid fat, so the plate tastes Spanish rather than Emilian and the fat coats the mouth more. Costs as much as culatello or more, which undercuts the point if you were substituting on price. Serrano ham is the cheaper Spanish option but is much saltier and firmer and lands further away.
5Speck Alto Adige
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Northern Italian cured pork leg that is lightly cold-smoked and rubbed with juniper, garlic and pepper.
What changes
Best for
antipasto plates, with rye bread, cooked into pasta or dumplings
A good cured meat that pushes the dish somewhere else: the smoke and juniper are immediately obvious and dominate anything they sit beside, where culatello is all sweetness and perfume. Use it if you like speck, not if the point of the plate was purity, and never as the single centrepiece meat on a board built around culatello.
6Bresaola
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
Air-dried salted beef eye of round from Lombardy, sliced paper thin.
What changes
Reach for it when you want a lean, elegant cured slice rather than a rich one.
Best for
salads with rocket and Parmesan, carpaccio-style plates, lighter antipasti
Beef rather than pork, and almost fat-free, so it is mineral and faintly tangy with a drier, slightly chewy bite and none of the melting fat that makes culatello luxurious. It also dries out fast on the plate. A reasonable stand-in for the role of thin cured meat, a poor one for culatello's texture.
7Ordinary Supermarket Prosciutto
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight
The honest least-bad option.
What changes
Fine wherever the cured meat is an ingredient rather than the star.
Best for
wrapping vegetables or chicken, crisping in a pan, risotto, pasta, sandwiches
Pre-sliced, short-aged prosciutto is essentially salt and fat with a thin cured note, and it works well cooked, where salt and fat are all you need. Do not build a tasting plate around it as a culatello replacement, because side by side the gap in aroma is the entire difference between the two products.

What is Culatello?

Culatello is Culatello is the boned inner muscle of a pig's hind leg, cased in a bladder and aged at least a year in the river fog of the Po valley, producing a deep rose, intensely perfumed cured meat sliced thin and eaten raw.

Cooking tips

Never cook culatello, and be careful about cooking its substitutes. The aroma it is prized for is volatile and disappears in a hot pan, so if a recipe wants cured pork to render into a sauce, buy pancetta or guanciale instead and save the culatello for the plate.
Slice it thicker than prosciutto, around a millimetre or two, and by hand rather than on the machine's thinnest setting. Culatello is silkier and less fatty than prosciutto, so paper-thin slices tear and lose the pleasure of the texture. If you are substituting prosciutto, ask for it cut thicker than the counter's default for the same reason.
Take it out of the fridge twenty to thirty minutes before serving. Cold suppresses the aroma almost completely, which is the single most common reason people conclude expensive cured meat tastes like ordinary ham.
The Emilian way to eat it is with plain bread and good unsalted butter, not melon. The butter is not a garnish; it softens the salt and carries the perfume, and it flatters every substitute on this list too.
Wrap the cut face tightly against the meat with plastic or baking paper and it keeps several weeks in the fridge. Culatello and whole prosciutto both develop a slightly rancid edge on an exposed face, so trim and discard the outer millimetre before slicing again.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave culatello out?

If it is one item on an antipasto board, yes, and nobody will miss it. If a recipe or menu is built on culatello, do not leave a hole in it; put out a well-aged prosciutto and a little butter instead. Culatello is almost never a functional ingredient in a cooked dish, so there is nothing structural to replace.

Is culatello just cured pork loin?

It is often described that way in English, but it is not the loin. Culatello comes from the rump and inner thigh muscle of the hind leg, the same leg that becomes prosciutto, boned out and cased in a bladder. Cured pork loin is lonza or lonzino, which is much leaner, paler and milder, and a poor substitute for culatello.

What is the difference between culatello and prosciutto?

Same leg, different treatment. Prosciutto is the whole bone-in leg cured with the skin on; culatello di Zibello is one deboned muscle from inside it, tied into a bladder and aged in the humid, foggy cellars of the Po valley, which gives it a sweeter taste, a much deeper rose colour and a distinctly musty, complex aroma. It also means far less meat per pig, which is why it costs several times as much.

Which substitute is closest if I am building a charcuterie board?

A 24-month prosciutto di Parma or a San Daniele, and serve it with soft bread and butter rather than crackers. If the board already has prosciutto and you wanted culatello for variety, choose something deliberately different instead, such as bresaola for leanness or mortadella for its smooth, pistachio-flecked contrast, rather than putting out two versions of the same thing.

Can I use it in a cooked dish at all?

You can, but it is a waste. The scraps and trimmings from the end of a piece are the exception; Emilian cooks throw those into a risotto or a pasta with cream and peas, where the salt and fat are useful and the perfume is beside the point. For anything that needs to render, use pancetta or guanciale.

Related substitutes

More meat & protein substitutes

Culatello substitute

Other culatello substitutes

2Prosciutto di San Daniele

3Fiocco or Culaccia

4Jamon Iberico de Bellota

5Speck Alto Adige

6Bresaola

7Ordinary Supermarket Prosciutto