Duck Proscuitto

Posted by BBQ Resources at 1/5/2009 3:33 PM
Categories: Projects
Duck Proscuitto

The third project in the 'duckumentary' is Duck Proscuitto.  This was crazy easy and the results were nothing less than fantastic.  The hardest part of this is finding/having a space with the right conditions for aging the salted duck breasts.  Hopefully you have a space that fits the bill, because this one's a winner!  Again, the base recipe is from the Charcuterie book.  I ramped up the seasoning, by adding to the curing salt and also to the salted duck.

Duck Proscuitto
- 4 duck breasts, skin-on
- 3-4 cups coarse sea or kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons ground bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons crushed red peppercorn
-1 tablespoon granulated garlic
- 7-8 juniper berries, coarse crushed
Mix the bay leaf, juniper berries, garlic and peppercorn in with 3 cups of the salt.  Lay a bed of salt down in the bottom of a Pyrex dish that will comfortably hold the duck breasts without them overlapping or touching.  Lay the duck breasts, fat-side up, into dish on the bed of salt.  Cover with remaining seasoned salt.  If any of the breast is still exposed, use straight salt to cover the exposed areas.  Cover the whole shebang with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours.



After 24 hours, remove the dish from the fridge, remove the breasts and rinse well under cold water to remove the surface salt and spices.  The meat should be substantially firmer and darker than when you started the day before!  At this point, I reapplied some more seasoning.  I went with the 'Christmas theme' of mixing 1 teaspoon of ground bay leaf and 1 tablespoon of course ground red peppercorn and sprinkled that over the 4 breasts.  


Each breast is wrapped in cheesecloth and hung to cure in a cool, humid environment, ideally between 50 and 60°F.  Fortunately for us, Big Dog's curing cabinet was full of genoa salami that also needed that same range of temp and humidity.  The breasts nestled in among all those salamis to hang and dry.

The ideal timeframe for this is about 7-10 days, just enough to firm up the breasts, but not to the point of getting 'hard'.  Due to a number of factors, these didn't get pulled out of the cabinet until Day 15, which resulted in the meat really drying up further than it should have (that dreaded 'shrinkage' again, eh, Big Dog?!).  While we will definitely do this again and will definitely pull out earlier (or else go for a bigger breed of duck to yield a bigger slice), this was a surefire winner, especially when accompanied by a thin slice of Parmessiano-Reggiano cheese.

Thus ends our 'duckumentary'; 3 recipes and 3 pleasing results; a great Christmas present for the Black Pig recipe pages!

Qfan
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
  • No comments exist for this post.
Leave a comment

Submitted comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Name (required)

 Email (will not be published) (required)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.