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- This topic has 8 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 6 months ago by
Scott Mark.
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January 24, 2012 at 3:09 pm #1353
Scott Mark
MemberI’m running out of space in the aging fridge! Thankfully, this is a very forgiving recipe, temperature-wise, and maybe I’ll just hang them in my garage where the critters can’t get ’em! I think someone suggested that a wine fridge would work.
This is duck-breast “prosciutto” from the Michael Ruhlman book “Charcuterie”.
The process is simple: make a bed of kosher salt. Lay duck breasts in the salt. Cover with more salt and let it set in a fridge for 24 hours. Rinse the breasts off, dust them with white pepper and maybe a few other things, wrap in cheesecloth and age for a week. Slice thin, serve raw.
Instead of cheesecloth, I’m going to dry-bag.
Also, I’m adding the step of cold-smoking them beforehand. They are currently outside where I’ve got a fifth-burner smoking a pan of sugar maple sawdust.
Results in about ten days!
January 24, 2012 at 4:41 pm #5459Ron Pratt
MemberScott,
I just rec’d that book for Christmas. I’m still overwhelmed at all the recipes and meats I have never heard of, let alone have trouble pronouncing so an old world butcher wouldn’t laugh me right out of his shop! :laugh:
RonJanuary 26, 2012 at 5:19 am #5476Scott Mark
MemberI admit that I flawed the process somewhat, yesterday.
Yesterday I wanted to cold-smoke the duck breasts before the salt-cure, but it turned out that I kinda hot-smoked them. They aren’t cooked through, but they definitely formed a hot-smoked pellicle on the surface of the meat. So I’m not sure that the salt cure penetrated the meat correctly.
But there was really nothing to do but plow on, so I rinsed them, sprinkled with white pepper, dry-bagged them, and put them in the fridge to age for a week.
AND — I used a “Dinner Party” bag.
January 27, 2012 at 3:57 am #5479Charlie
MemberThis is risky in the way the poultry is sealed because you can have bacteria in the portions that are touching each other and may have biological growth. But since you have smoked the pieces first and going for only a week… .??? Who knows!
Good luck and I agree it is still much better than cheese cloth!
B)
CharlieJanuary 27, 2012 at 4:09 am #5482Scott Mark
MemberBeg pardon, but this is not risky because for sure there are no bacteria in the portions that are touching. All tested out at 167F which is why I say that the “cold smoking” didn’t work out that way.
But let’s also work backward and see if we get the same conclusion. Let’s consider a single piece, not touching another piece. Assuming that the published recipe in the cookbook is correct and safe, the only exposure that the interior of that piece will have is to the exterior of the piece, that has been in contact with salt for 24 hours. And the recipe says that this is safe, and my own experience agrees.
So, if we agree that the exterior of each piece of duck is safe- How could touching two safe things become unsafe? If we don’t agree that the exterior of each piece is safe — then we need to go back to the recipe and decide if a single piece is safe. We’re talking a recipe from Michael Ruhlman. I agree that he might be wrong but intuition tells me that he (or someone on his team) has done some research on the topic.
So I take Amoxicillin twice a day. So what? :laugh:
January 27, 2012 at 8:50 am #5483Charlie
Memberanytime you expose the product there is potential for contamination and that includes pre cooking with what ever…
B)
Charlie
March 9, 2012 at 10:28 am #5761Joseph Moore
MemberClam Digger wrote:
quote :anytime you expose the product there is potential for contamination and that includes pre cooking with what ever…B)
Charlie
That is absolutely true! At the moment of unpacking you risk ‘contaminating’ a product with bacteria or whatsoever is flying around the air. It is the same with unpacking meat as well as unpacking a fruit juice or wine cases. You can never know.
I often use those ‘dinner party’ bags to keep meat and so on as long as possible as fresh as possible! They are absolutely great.
March 9, 2012 at 11:18 pm #5764Barry
MemberSmoking can act as a preservative (although not as well as cooking and freezing!).
March 11, 2012 at 3:39 pm #5772Scott Mark
MemberI’ve got four more duck breast portions in the salt now, getting ready for drybagging this evening and a week of aging in the fridge.
These are not smoked- I followed the original recipe from Charcuterie. I think that the smoke added a definite sweetness to the previous batch.
Yum.
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