Home-Cured Duck Breast Prosciutto- Nice Knockers!

My first homemade charcuterie project was a resounding success; thanks, Michael Ruhlman, for your super informative book.  Recently I’ve become pretty intrigued with at-home charcuterie; it all started with the extra refrigerator Jonas brought home a few months ago from the office that sat languishing on our deck.  I hate useless appliances, and I really try to keep my kitchen fairly gadget-free (though I confess to being lured in by promised convenience more than I probably should).  That’s why this refrigerator was bothering me so much just sitting there mocking me from our unused upper deck without so much as a nearby electrical outlet so we could plug it in. 

I finally requested that Jonas make a morning project of rearranging our master bathroom closet to accommodate the refrigerator- how many mismatched Missoni bath towels and pilfered Mondrian soaps does a girl really need?  I’ve had it up and running for a month now- it’s great.  I bring Bentley’s bottle of milk upstairs at night, use the second fridge to house said milk, and take it out for the baby in the morning so I don’t have to make the arduous journey downstairs.  That’s it.  There is not another damn thing that has seen the inside of the spare refrigerator to this day, mainly because I can’t regulate the temperature enough inside it to ensure even curing.  What does this have to do with my luscious duck boobies? Not a thing, since it was my laborious mistake in the first place, but I promise you, you will see home-cured pork belly cum bacon coming out of that refrigerator before the year’s end even if I have to get a refrigeration and humidity degree just to figure out how to regulate the chilly sucker! 

Now on to more important matters- duck breast prosciutto, wowsa! If you choose to give up an active hour or so of your life to this project, you will not regret it.  And neither will your lucky friends who are sure to reap the joys of your efforts once your breasts have shriveled to just the right sinuousness and you decide it’s time to bias slice them for the oral pleasure of all around.  If all this sounds a bit disgusting and too anthropomorphic for your taste, don’t forget, we’re talking duck breasts here.  Just think of the exact opposite thing you look for in a nice, human busom and that’s what you’ll want to do to make that of the duck taste simply divine.  Scrub it down, slather it in salt, and hang it to dry for days upon days until it shrivels and shrinks to 70% of its original size and you’re guaranteed goodness.  Again, we’re talking ducks here, not Grandmas, people! 

Here is a detailed account of my exact technique. 

Mix 20 juniper berries, 30 coriander seeds, 10 blessac peppercorns, 4 crumpled bay leaves, 8 oz white Hawaiian salt and 16 oz curing salt with one heaping spoonful of sorghum.  Place 1/3 of this mixture in the bottom of a pyrex dish just large enough to hold four duck breast sides (basically two split breasts).  Trim the duck breast sides of excess fat and make note of the weight of each side (you want the flesh and the fat to be about the same diameter all around. You may have to split your breasts if your butcher has not already done so or if you were lucky enough to bow-hunt your own this season.)

Pack the remaining salt mixture around the duck breasts so that they are completely covered, put the lid on the pyrex and refrigerate breasts for 24 hours.  Remove from refrigeration, wash off salt, and wrap breasts in one layer of cheesecloth. Tie according to illustration and hang in a temperature-controlled chamber that is between 60-65 degrees.  My wine fridge worked perfectly since it has a great thermostat.   The breasts are done curing when they weigh 70% of what they originally weighed.  For example, each of my breasts started off around 5.75 ounces, and after 8 days they were down to nearly 4 ounces each.  Once they are done curing you can untie the cheesecloth and wrap them in plastic wrap in the refrigerator. They will keep for several weeks.   The addition of spices to the salts is purely subjective and came out of my head.  You can substitute molasses for sorghum (which is a syrup made from the juice of sorghum cane, commonly found in the southern US), and play around with your own mix of berries and seeds.  You also may substitute regular salt for curing salt, I just didn’t want to take any chances and I have easy access to curing salt down at Market Spice  (I believe they ship).

Now on to the gustatory factor: these little boulders are blasphemously tasty, as sensuous on the palate as they are dangling willy nilly from their rip cords during curing.  I’ve eaten them straight up to get a real sense of their character, very rich, a little bit goes a long, long way.  My favorite serving thus far (we still have two luscious lobes left) has been ever-so-slightly melted on a raclette griddle served on a baguette slice over melted raclette cheese.  I think they would be off the hook on pizza- that’s my next kitchen adventure.