Last year I told my mother to buy a special ham for me, the ones that are wrapped in a special paper, the salty ones that I am guessing only were cured by salting. But she didn't buy me even though I was the one who will pay for it. I never really had the chance to eat a real ham because all that I had was the wet cured ones with lots of preservatives and extenders.
The real ham here requires salting the meat only and it makes the meat more tender but it makes a difference what kind of pork hind leg to use, the type of pig to take, and what kind of foods they are fed with prior to processing. So if you feed your pigs a week before slaughter with fruits and corn or acorns, then expect a more tasty product when you make a ham.
But hams such as those that I wanted like this from Spain might be delicious but they are so expensive that you can buy a motorcycle with a side car for one stupid leg of a ham. So I think it is better to make our own hams by using the techniques we can learn from online videos.
Curing a ham is just so simple to do for me, just salt the shit out of it and put it in a dry cool place away from insects then months later you have a ham. It may be time consuming but it will be rewarding after months of waiting, trimming, and inspecting work to finally cut some slice of that tasty and rather rare treat that most people cannot enjoy.