Crushed insects are what give the red color to sweet ham (and also to lipstick).

The insect called cochinealThe plant that typically lives on prickly pear cacti is used by the food industry as a coloring agent for cooked ham, cured sausage, mortadella, chorizo, and also yogurts and strawberry candies. Because if we were to read the labels cochineal (Dactylopius coccusPerhaps we would think twice before buying all these products; there are other, permitted, alternatives: E-120, carminic acid, or carmine. And incidentally, that same component, carmine, is also used in cosmetics to create red lipsticks.

Cochineal is not the only extra ingredient that sweet ham can contain; there may also be potato starch, which is used to give the sausage more texture and consistency, and therefore adds carbohydrates to the protein we initially thought we were eating. In fact, a natural sweet ham, if it were truly natural and not a case of labeling error, should be more whitish in color, because it is the result of a boiled pig's leg. If it is only boiled, without extra ingredients, then the sweet ham is light in color, and that is precisely how many cooks who have started making their own sausages do. At the Provisions Gresca delicatessen, chef Rafa Peña She told me that people asked her, with a mixture of surprise and curiosity, about the light color of her cooked ham. The food industry has managed to make us stop questioning whether that striking red of the cured meat is natural. It isn't, just as the red of some mortadella and whipped sausages isn't, nor is the red of many other sausages that are a deep red.

Cooked and crushed cochineal

Thus, cochineal, cooked and crushed, is added to cooked ham to give it color. According to nutritionist Anna Grífols, "it is only used for its color, and not because extra nutritional properties are sought." In fact, cochineal from the prickly pear cactus, like any good insect, is a source of protein and can improve the cardiovascular system. It's not that cochineal is special; many insects share the same characteristics, and that's why it's often used in food. The debate is that humans will have to eat insects to compensate for the overexploitation of other natural resources, such as fish or shellfish.

The curious thing is that the same ingredient we eat when we consume cooked ham is also applied to our lips by some people when we want a touch of red. So many years of literary descriptions of the carmine color of our lips, and it turns out that the poor, earthly cochineal insects were the ones crushed to obtain all the shades of red we could want.

Finally, if we wanted, we could prepare cooked ham ourselves at home. To do this, we need to boil chicken breast—the better the chicken, the better—then slice it thinly, and that's it. After boiling, it can be kept refrigerated for a few days before consumption. You'll have it ready to eat in sandwiches or in the famous bikinis (a type of cheesecake), which absolutely require it.