Duck Prosciutto 4.0 STEP 2!

The finished product!

Before I get into the next step of my Duck Prosciutto recipe let me make one thing clear. There are some things I didn't cover in my last post.

I hate to say it but I made some assumptions about YOU the reader. I have to apologize! Don't take this the wrong way, I'm going to cover some basic stuff that you need to do or you could get sick. A couple days on the ceramic throne sick! On to the serious stuff.

Please keep your stuff clean! I mean, your cutting boards, knives, your scale, all of it, but most importantly keep your hands clean! I know it's a pain but of all things, we cross-contaminate more with our hands than with any other possible utensil!


The best way to clean your stuff? About a half a gallon of water with 2 tsp of bleach! That's it, cheap, easy and right there under the sink!

Okay now that the health and safety is taken care of on to part two of our recipe!

Things you will need:
2 salted duck breast
paper towels
butchers twine
digital scale
a small plate
refrigerator or cold dark basement
cheesecloth (optional)
between 7-10 days or 2 weeks
Plenty of hot water and soap (not OPTIONAL)

Now that your duck breasts have cured in the salt and pink salt for at least 1 day and not more than 2 days (I like 36 hours) you can take it out of the fridge and clean off the salt and spices. I wash it under warm water to clean off the salt and stuck on pieces of herbs. As you handle the it you will notice that the duck has sort of stiffened. That is the wonder of salt both the pink and regular salt doing its job!

Salted and seasoned!

Once I have cleaned off the salt dry the duck with paper towels and set them aside I move on to the scale... 

NOT! I wash my hands!

Please keep washing your hands throughout this process! You'll feel so good knowing you didn't poison someone!

After you have washed your hands, get the out the scale. I like to weigh my duck before wrapping and trussing. In doing so I find out if the right amount of drying is happening. Some recipes simply call for 7-10 days of drying. Others call for 30% of the weight to be lost in hanging and drying.

I'll be honest both ways work. I have tried each one and each one works as well as the other.

Note the starting weight of the duck breast

Moving on, using the 'tare' function place a small plate on the scale and hit the 'tare' button to zero out the weight of the plate. Note the weight of each piece of duck and record that weight. If your duck starts out at 124 grams then your duck should lose 37 grams (30% of the weight) during the course of drying.

The next step is to truss the breast, basically you are wrapping it with string to make it easier to hang, this video shows the easiest way to truss a piece of meat in the range we have with a duck breast, http://youtu.be/iDtLRqoHb9A I know the graphics and intro are hokey but the technique works.


Before you truss the duck there is another option you need to choose, cheesecloth or no cheesecloth? I am trying no cheesecloth this time around. But as with everything everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Now that you have wrapped and trussed the duck, or not! You can hang it in the fridge! How you do that is up to you! I have glass shelves in my fridge and have a hanger that I have bent into a special rig to hang my duck.






Now comes the test of your patience! You might need to wait up to 2 weeks for this to cure. If you decide to weigh your duck, the first couple of days you will see quite a bit of weight coming off your duck breast, then about 5 days into the process it will slow to a crawl. My buddy Brennan likes to feel the difference in his duck. It seems that when the duck stops feeling "squishy" it is ready, that happens in about 10 days. 

Now go wash your hands!!!

Weekends with my Dad

It's funny the way we remember things...

I was just listening to some music and "Okie From Muskogee" played. Merle Haggard records were always on the turntable when we were kids!

When I was a kid we used to spend the weekend with my Dad (not that Momma wasn't around, but she knew how important that time was), he would work on the never ending chores of working on the car or cleaning out the garage or rearranging the furniture for Momma and we... more like I would be spinning records, old stuff and new stuff like Elvis, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Mostly we listened to Elvis right up till about noon when the local TV station would show the weekend western, then an Elvis movie. My first taste of John Wayne came on one of those weekends. "The Cowboys" "Big Jake" and "El Dorado" all the classics and yet we would sit there rolling our eyes, but we still hated "Long Hair" (Bruce Dern) for shooting "Mr. Anderson" (John Wayne) in the back. Sorry for the spoiler but if you haven't watched The Cowboys yet, shame on you!

And don't get me started on all the old Elvis movies... So corny but listening to him sing was special!

It was still a time when we were innocent, before the Internet, YES there was a time before the Internet, before video games and smartphones, ha I remember the time one of my little school friends came over and didn't know how to use my mom's fancy looking rotary phone! He picked up the receiver and just looked down at the rotary dial and stared. The poor kid only knew how to use a touch-tone phone, my parents got a kick out of it.

But I digress, we didn't worry about the things we do today, I was ten or eleven and I didn't have to worry about drugs in elementary or even later middle school, I didn't have to worry about people abusing me in any way cause I knew Dad would stand up for me, I didn't have to think about what was for dinner, how long my commute home from work would take, I didn't have to watch everything I ate and drank for fear it might trigger a migraine.

I didn't have a care in the world, just what records I was going to spin next, and to listen for that call from my Dad for a flashlight or a 3/8 socket, or that I was taking too long to start up the next record. And to believe I used to dread those weekends! 

I hated listening to all that OLD music and watching those OLD movies! Now I miss those times. I miss Dad, it's been 15 years now since he died. But I know that I will see him again, and hearing Okie From Muskogee brought a smile to my face because in my mind I could just hear him in the distance singing along about as loud as he could. (BTW Dad had never been to Muskogee in his life)