Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is applied to identify three kinds of different quality Xuanwei hams. A total of 27 samples are tested. The results show that the infrared spectra of the three kinds of different quality Xuanwei hams have more obvious difference. The content of lipid, protein, carbohydrate, aldehyde, alcohol, ketone, ester, hydrocarbon and other compounds in the three kinds of Xuanwei hams changes with the marinating period. The content of lipid and polysaccharide decreases with the growth of the marinating period, while the content of protein increases. FTIR spectroscopy combined with principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to identify 27 Xuanwei ham samples, and the synthetic classification accuracy reaches 100%. It is demonstrated that the FTIR method is a powerful tool to perform component analysis and identification of Xuanwei hams.