Duck, Duck, Duck, Ham!

I love cured meats. One of my great sadnesses since forgoing all meat of unknown origin (we only eat meat that we raise, or know the farm and farmer where the animal was raised) has been the inability of finding locally raised and produced prosciutto. We’d heard that you could cure duck breast and achieve prosciutto-like results, but have been either too time challenged, or scared to try. We thought that our 23 pound turkey might not be enough meat for our Thanksgiving gathering (what were we thinking?!), so we had defrosted a chicken and a duck just in case. We ended up with a thawed duck in the fridge, but having had our fill of roast fowl, we needed to come up with another use for the bird, and fast. Then it hit us. Cure it!

We used a very simple recipe from Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef (recipe below), and the results were amazing. It took little time to prepare, and less than 2 days in the fridge. Next we plan to try something cured and aged. Stay tuned.

Tom Colicchio’s Duck Ham

1. Place the duck breasts in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. Using a sharp knife, remove the skin and most of the fat, leaving only a thin protective layer. (We didn’t remove any of the fat — we think the recipe may be assuming you are using a fattier standard Pekin duck, whereas we raise Rouen ducks, which is the traditional French table duck.)

2. Mix the salt, sugar, garlic, pepper, thyme, (shallots), and bay leaves. Lay two pieces of plastic wrap on a clean work surface. Place a quarter of the salt mixture on each piece of plastic. Lay the duck breasts, skin-side down, on the salt, then cover with the remaining salt mixture. Wrap each breast tightly and refrigerate for 24 hours. (We left ours in for around 36 hours.)

3. Unwrap the duck hams, discard the salt mixture, and blot dry with paper towels. Slice and serve or wrap in fresh plastic and refrigerate until ready to use.

Enjoy! We sure did!