Jamón Croquetas: an oozing Spanish entrée

Being deeply unchic and uncosmopolitan, for a long time I assumed that croquetas were the same as the croquettes of my childhood: potato-based, probably a bit bland, and almost certainly coming from a bag that lives in the freezer. We’d often have them served with roast ham and cider sauce and green beans, as part of a main meal. To be fair to me and my culinary shortsightedness, the two bear strong similarities: both are breadcrumbed and fried or baked, soft within, and similarly shaped and sized. But, to my mind, croquetas are several levels above the French/English potato variant.

Of course, Spanish croquetas don’t contain potato at all. The filling is made from a thick, thick bechamel sauce: a flour and butter roux cooked with milk to form a sauce. Folded through this thick sauce are little nuggets of something highly flavoured. Sometimes shot through with cheese, they can be flavoured with cured Spanish ham, salt fish, smoked fish or crab, chicken or mushrooms, but ham is probably the most famous (and my favourite). Smokey and sweet, salty and cheesy, creamy and gooey inside, crisp and crunchy outside. It ticks all my boxes. A staple of tapas restaurants, served hot alongside very cold sherry, perhaps dunked into something silky like a really good mayonnaise, it’s hard to think of a better start to an evening.

Spanish croquetas require Spanish ham. There are two principal types of cured Spanish ham: jamón Serrano and jamón Ibérico. Either will work here, bringing that distinctive sweet-salty, intense, almost nutty flavour. Ideally, you would use a chunk of ham cut up until small pieces, but this can be hard to come by in the UK – so if you can’t get hold of it, slices of cured Serrano or Ibérico ham will still work well.