Duck Breast + Salt - Food Poisoning = YUM!

Hi all!

Well...  I am happy to report that my first official charcutepalooza attempt was a success!  We were growing nervous because our duck breasts were a bit thinner than it seemed they should be and yet they were taking longer than expected to lose their moisture.  I immediately assumed the worst, that the wine fridge we used did not have enough humidity and the outside had dried and the inside never would.

Anyway! We purchased a Bell & Evans whole duck from a local meat market.  This duck was just waiting to be broken down and turned in to delicious charcuterie!  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we used the extras after cutting away the breasts to make confit legs in our sous vide supreme, about a cup of duck fat, amazing cracklins, and a delicious autumn stock that I've since cooked down to make a duck demi glace (freezer space is at a premium here!)

But onto the the prosciutto.  Having two breasts, I knew we wanted to do one simply with salt and pepper as Ruhlman suggested in Charcuterie and another one with a different flavor.  We decided that for the second one, we'd use the rootbeer cure from the Alinea cookbook since we'd recently started using it on meat and were already in love with it.

So we toasted up a batch of the spices for the rootbeer cure, ground it in our spice grinder and mixed it in with the salt, reserving a spoonful to rub on the duck after its salt soak. The spices included sassafras, star anise, fennel and juniper berries, among others.  I can't think of anything that would smell better than these spices toasting on your stove.

 

As a side note, I know that cookbook seems a bit scary but it is really a great tool for the home cook because the flavors and foods that are put together are so well thought out and carefully chosen.  You can use parts of a recipe to really elevate your food without even cooking one whole dish.

Rootbeer cure being mixed up!

The duck breasts sit fully covered in salt and cure for 24 hours in the actual refrigerator at which point its time to get prepped for the second refrigerator... the wine fridge.

Right before we wrapped up the duck to go in the wine fridge, I rinsed them off and sprinkled pepper on one and a bit of the rootbeer cure (minus the salt) on the other.

And after a week or so of waiting we broke them out to try.

Guys! you HAVE to try this!  The rootbeer flavor is very mild but goes amazingly well with the gamey sweetness of the cured duck.  It cuts through the fat nicely and leaves a really pleasant flavor.  I think we're gonna dice some and have it with pasta with a creamy sauce, a bit of nutmeg and some caramelized onions.  I thought originally that the rootbeer flavor might be limiting but its definitely the opposite!  Its delicious and carries the flavor of the duck well. We had some for breakfast with fried eggs and some white beans cooked in veal stock.

I'm so pleased that month one of charcutepalooza was a success.  I will definitely make this again in the near future.  We picked up our pork belly and began month two's recipe earlier this week.  I'm really excited about this one too but I'm honestly not sure it will be able to compete with rootbeer flavored duck we made for this month!

Charcutepalooza

Long before I had a blog to call my own I would read others' and envy their ability to participate in "challenges" that involved regularly cooking certain types of food or from specific cookbooks.  Anyone that knows me knows I like projects... sometimes these projects are seen through to the end and other times they're abandoned early on. I'm excited to say that I've signed up to participate in a challenge that not only has relatively lax rules (do what you can when you can) but if it goes according to plan, it will keep me in cured meat for the whole year!

The project I'm taking part in is called Charcutepalooza and it's being hosted by Mrs. Wheelbarrow and The Yummy Mummy on Mrs. Wheelbarrow's blog.  The challenge is to make something out of Michael Ruhlman's (fabulous) book Charcuterie every month and post about it on the 15th.  The first challenge is Duck Prosciutto and I've already got some curing in the wine fridge.

The best part of this project (so far... since the prosciutto isn't ready to taste) is all the other things you get when you buy a whole duck instead of just the breasts.  Once I broke down the duck for the breasts, I had two legs, thighs, and a carcass.  I know that doesn't sound especially appealing but I generally use every possible part of the meat I buy and this was no different. I confit'd the legs and thighs in my sous vide supreme (an INCREDIBLE tool making sous vide accessible to home cooks that we'll discuss later).  I also trimmed all the fat and skin and slowly rendered the fat.

What resulted from this was about a cup of duck skin cracklins and about a cup of duck fat (ie liquid gold).

Finally, I used the carcass along with some veal bones to make a delicious (albeit unusual) stock.  Phew!

Check back on the 15th for the (hopefully) tasty results!