Making duck prosciutto was an exercise in patience! In the end totally worth it. I have to thank my buddy Brennan for being my sounding board about all of my home cooking/curing experiences.
After experimenting with homemade bacon and brining my own Canadian bacon I decided to try my hand at duck prosciutto. After looking online for some Muscovy duck breast I settled on the duck breast from the Bristol Farms. It was kind of thin but the dark rich duck meat looked good. I won't go into details about the process today (but I will in a future blog)
I seasoned the salt with herbs before I buried the duck breast in it. So in the strictest sense what you will see here isn't really prosciutto. I let that stay in the fridge for 2 days waiting for the salt to dry out the outside of the breast.
After that 2 days I wrapped, trussed, and hung the breast in my fridge for about 7 days.
Around the 5th day I could feel the edges harden just a bit and the squishyness of the center started to
go away.
I didn't just go off the "feel" of the duck to decide to open up the cheesecloth. I used a scale to weigh the duck each day. When it lost about 30% of it's weight I decided to try some duck prosciutto!
 |
| Just like a week ago! |
I cut the trussing and unwrapped the cheesecloth. Honestly I wasn't expecting it to look almost exactly the same as when I put it in the wrapping. But it did!
I grabbed my sharpest slicing knife to try and cut the thinnest slices possible. The skin side of the breast sliced very easily and as you sliced into the breast the harder dryer parts of the underside of the breast were a little tough to cut.
All in all I really enjoyed the experience. I definitely am going to do this again!
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