Experiment #3: duck breast “prosciutto”

I 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.

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Beg 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:

I’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.