Things you find around the house - ANSWERS

If you guessed “something wrapped up in cheesecloth and hung from the ceiling joists”, you’d be kinda right…just not very specific.

The more specific answer would be homemade duck prosciutto.  I got the idea from Michael Ruhlman’s most excellent blog.  I had no clue that one could undertake that sort of thing at home…my eyes have been opened.  He wrote the definitive book on home charcuterie, which I think I’ll have to look into sometime.

Just go read some other blog if you don’t want to see pictures of food prep, including raw ingredients.  You’ve been warned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take a duck breast, and remove the tenderloin bit and cook it as a treat in your fried rice for lunch.

Cover in tons of salt, and let it be in the fridge for a day.

rinse off the salt.  The meat is firmer and drier now.

cover it up in cheesecloth and tie.

Hang it up somewhere cool for a week.  According to Ruhlman, it should lose about 30% of its weight when done.

After two weeks in the basement, I decided it was “done” though it hadn’t lost quite enough weight yet (250g would have been an ideal target weight).

It’s obvious in hindsight, but I think the applicability of the “30%” rule will vary depending on the ratio of fat to meat on the duck breast.  Most of the water content is in the meat, so a leaner duck breast would lose a greater percentage of its weight in the process of the meat drying out than one with a thicker layer of fat.

After two weeks, the meat got quite dark on the outside, and the fat layer is now much thicker than the remaining meat.  This is probably on the way to “duck jerky” compared to what it would have looked like after drying for only a week.  This explains a lot to me about why there is so little apparent meat on pancetta compared to the fat.  The fat just doesn’t shrink much while drying.

The end-result.  This is quite rich, so very thin slices are the order of the day.  The taste is very much of poultry, but also carries a strong association of pork since most cured meats we eat are from pork.

Haven’t cooked with it yet, except we fried up some lardons tonight to garnish a potato soup.  Yum.  Will have to try some on homemade pizza too, in addition the the usual breakfast ideas.

I’ll definitely make this again, and next time will get adventurous with spices.  You can add spices both when you salt-cure and when you hang to dry.  I wanted to taste the base flavours first, though.