Chuck Zumbrun

Tales from Skunk Hill

Duck, Duck

Last year we got a case of frozen duck breasts from the Maple Leaf Farms company store over north of Warsaw. They’re in packages of four. Last night Debbie and I had seared duck breast with fig sauce, quite tasty, but now we have two more duck breasts to do something with.

I looked around the Internet for ideas and came across recipes for curing duck breast to make duck prosciutto. An intriguing idea, but I wasn’t sure I’d eat duck that has sat in salt and then hung in the open air to dry based on some unvetted blog postings. I searched a little more and found an article by Michael Ruhlman, author of Charcuterie, about curing duck breast in this fashion. That’s good enough for me! My salt cured duck breast is underway!

The curing mix.

Curing mix

It’s just a pound of kosher salt and a quarter pound of brown sugar stirred together.

The raw duck breasts, rinsed and dried.

Raw Duck

All to do now is rub them with the salt and sugar mix to ensure they’re thoroughly coated, and then put them in a dish and cover them with the curing mix.

Curing Duck

Now they go into the fridge for a day or two, then I’ll rinse the salt off and hang them to dry in the basement. They’ll hang 7-10 days and then be ready to eat!

One response to “Duck, Duck”

  1. […] I cut down the duck breasts that were curing in the basement today. (See the first half of this story here.) […]

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