MADISONVILLE, Tenn. – Allan Benton started selling country hams here in the 1970s, figuring he could make a better living than he did as a high school guidance counselor. His early efforts were not encouraging.
“I would peddle them on the back of a pickup truck up through Maryville, over to Townsend, through Wears Valley into Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg,” he said of his hams, which were aged 15 months rather than the 90 days of his competitors’. “No one wanted them. I just about starved.”
Nearly 50 years later, Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams is revered for bacon found on menus in the country’s most celebrated restaurants and for ham products ranging from packages of “biscuit piece” slices to heritage-breed hindquarters aged for two years and longer, until the meat’s depth of flavor is comparable to jamón Ibérico and prosciutto.
“I knew I had something special,” he said.
On a recent April afternoon, Benton was looking forward to foraging for ramps in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, about an hour’s drive from his smokehouse. The pastime has become associated with Benton over the years, as word spread among journalists, celebrity chefs and food enthusiasts about the hospitality the ham maker extends to those who visit his headquarters in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.