Ain’t that just ducky?

Knowing I can do air dried charcuterie safely in the refrigerator with the assistance of Banquet Bags® I obviously wanted to try something as soon as possible. Of course, the biggest trouble with air dried products is that they take months, if not years, to mature. There had to be something quick and simple to try to see these bags at work. It turns out there is.

Duck prosciutto, while technically not a true prosciutto, is salt cured and air dried. And the bonus is that it is quick and easy to make.

I bought a pair of breast halves from the local supermarket. Bred from white pekin stock, the breasts from commercial producer “Luv-a-Duck” were quite lean and small. I’m now in search of a local source of ducks, preferably a breed with larger breast muscle..

The method couldn’t be simpler.

With a sharp knife score the skin side of the breast with a very sharp knife. The cuts should go through the skin and well into the fat until you almost reach the meat. Turn the breast 90° and score again to form a diamond pattern. For the small breasts I ground 6 juniper berries, a teaspoon of peppercorns and a small sprig of rosemary with a mortar and pestle and rubbed the results into the prepared breasts on both sides.

Cut two pieces of plastic cling film (Saran wrap for American readers) big enough to wrap each duck breast. Make a bed of plain salt in the middle about 5mm (¼ inch) thick and a little bigger than the duck. Sit a slab of duck in the middle and cover with more salt. The idea is to encase each breast in salt before bundling up the cling film to keep the package secure. With both breasts done they can be returned to the fridge to cure for about 24 hours (less for small thin breast pieces).

The next day unwrap the parcels and carefully wash all of the salt from the duck breasts. They will be firmer in texture and darker in colour than they were when fresh due to moisture loss. Dry them with some paper towel and dust lightly with white pepper. The breasts can then be wrapped in cheesecloth and hung to dry, or in my case sealed inside a Banquet Charcuterie Bag. Before you hang the breasts in the fridge or aging chamber it’s a good idea to make a note of their weight.

Duck prosciutto ready to eat

The prosciutto will be ready to eat in about 3 weeks or when they have lost approximately 30% of the original weight.

As with real prosciutto, this is best served sliced as thinly as possible. Why should people miss out on the joy of prosciutto just because they don’t eat pork?

Everything tastes better with this bacon.

I gave up buying supermarket bacon years ago. The rashers available prepackaged from the dairy case were so flaccid and flavourless. The rashers from the service deli are only marginally better. For a very short time I was spoilt enough to have a neighbourhood butcher that made his own small goods, so I knew what good bacon should taste like. But, unfortunately he had to give up butchery due to ill health. Out of sheer desperation I began buying mass produced speck nuggets in order to get something that even came close to real bacon flavour. The success with the smoked ham had me determined to try my own.

A trip to the butcher netted me a good slab of thick, fresh pork belly and a quick look around the website that I got the ham in a bag recipe gave me access to a mild bacon recipe which seemed like a good place to start.

My lovely slab of belly, once I had removed the bones weighed in at 2.3kg. Entering this weight into the calculator gave me the following recipe:

•  42.55g salt
•  23g sugar
•  5.52g Cure #1 (6.25% sodium nitrite)

To this I added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme from the garden and a teaspoon of black pepper which I pulverised well with mortar and pestle. The resulting mix was then rubbed onto the meat, with approximately 10% on the skin and the remainder on all surfaces of the meat. With it all well covered in cure I packed it up in a vacuum bag and put it in the fridge for 7 days, turning it occasionally (when I remembered).

At the end of the 7 days I removed the meat from its vacuum bag and washed it in cold water to make sure the cure was removed from the outside. The surface was patted dry with paper towel and then into the smoker charged with some apple chips it went.

Hanging bacon after smoking

When smoking I try to keep the temperatures as low as possible and allow time to work its magic. When the thickest part of the bacon tested at 65°C (150°F) with a meat probe I removed it from the smoker and hung it in the fridge overnight.

Some would argue that the bacon would be best left to hang and rest for a few more days or even just a day or two packed in another vacuum bag to allow the smoke to settle into the meat. I couldn’t wait that long, particularly when I opened the fridge to check it the next day. Mmmmmmm…. The whole fridge smelled like bacon so I couldn’t resist fresh bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Never will I purchase bacon again.

You will not believe how much better bacon can be.

The experiment begins

I had no intention to blog. What on earth could I have to say that would interest anyone else? In fact, I doubt that the internet really needs another food blogger. So what got me to this point?

I was in need of a way to record my experiments and online just seemed the best way to do it. For some reason it’s just easier to discuss things over a page on a screen these days than scribble in a notebook. Don’t worry, the notebook still exists, dog-eared and splattered. It just wouldn’t be the same without a book to make notes in along the way.

The adventure itself started with an early Christmas present. With about two weeks until the holiday, my partner and I decided to buy ourselves a small smoker cabinet as a joint present. That led to the idea of a small smoked ham for Christmas dinner. And the frantic research began.

An injection cured ham seemed the only way to go with the very short time frame available. There was no way we needed a full leg of ham for four adults, and therein lies the beauty of the D.I.Y. option. A boned loin section was chosen for the process. With access to a vacuum packing machine I used the method for Pauline’s Ham in a Bag for the curing.

Mid morning Christmas Eve the gas was lit in the smoker, some soaked apple chips dropped into the smoker box, the now cured ham released from its plastic cocoon and placed in the dark chamber to rest and take on the fragrance of the smoke within. Nervous hours followed during the heat of the day, checking temperatures, feeding more chips to the magic black box all the time worried that the contents within wouldn’t come out as the flavoursome ham that I’d hoped for but some horridly dry, salty lump of coal.

Fortunately the ham received rave reviews from the table occupants come Christmas day and I was emboldened to experiment further…