duck prosciutto

…without a curing chamber.

Name: Duck Prosciutto

This post will detail how you can get started making your very own duck prosciutto without using a curing chamber. This is a good entry level project, since in most places you can easily buy a duck breast from the grocery store and its relatively small size means it will be done sooner than most other projects. In order to do this, we are going to be using UMAI dry bags and the regular fridge. If you haven’t read the Beginner’s Guide yet, now would be a good time to do that. Let’s get started!

The meat:

To make duck prosciutto, all you need is a single duck breast. You can usually find this at a larger grocery store or at your local butcher shop.

Curing (4C/40F, 2+ weeks):

Once you have the duck breast, it’s time to weigh it. I almost always use an equilibrium cure, which allows me some flexibility with the timing of my projects. I suggest using it, to avoid projects that end up under/over salted. For more information on equilibrium curing vs excess curing, refer back to the Beginner’s Guide.

Once you have the weight, you can enter it into the interactive spreadsheet below, just fill the weight of your meat in the appropriate white cell in the spreadsheet and hit enter. There is no need to make any other changes to the spreadsheet.

* Note: Please use common sense. Make sure the spreadsheet is working properly for you and double check any calculations that don’t seem right.

Weigh all the spices and mix all them together.

Then, cover the meat with them.

Vacuum seal it all together.

Casing:

After the meat has been cured for 2+ weeks, it’s time to take it out, rinse it, and pat it dry.

Grab an UMAI dry bag and VacMouse channel vacuum adapter.

Place the duck breast in the bag. Vacuum seal it with the VacMouse adapter at the mouth of the bag to help it seal. The company says that it doesn’t need to fully seal to work, but the only time I had a bad result was when the bag wasn’t fully sealed, so I would do my best to achieve as tight a vacuum seal as possible.

**Drying (4C/40F, any RH*, 1-2 months)**:

The nice thing about using the UMAI dry bags, is that you no longer need to control the humidity of the atmosphere where it will be drying. This means you don’t need a special curing chamber, and can use the regular fridge. That being said, I’ve had a few projects dry out too fast and get some case hardening. Now, when I do an UMAI dry bag project in the regular fridge, I save one of the vegetable drawers for it. I put a drying rack in the drawer to allow for air movement around the piece of meat, and I turn the tab to “high” humidity. Using this method I’ve had great results using these bags in the regular fridge.

So, once you’ve sealed the duck breast in the UMAI dry bag, place it on a rack in the fridge. As mentioned above, if you can spare a vegetable drawer for it, that would be best.

Once it has lost 30-45% of its original weight, according to your tastes, remove it from the fridge. This should take 1-2 months depending on your conditions.

Tasting:

Finally! When the right amount of time has passed, remove the duck breast from the fridge.

I like to do a red wine rinse at the end for any mold that may have accumulated, which can happen even in the regular fridge, but is less common than in the curing chamber where you usually have inoculated it with mold. After the red wine rinse, pat dry, slice, and enjoy!

The perfect addition to a charcuterie plate!

Disclaimer: Meat curing is a hobby that comes with inherent risks. We can all do things to limit this risk by educating ourselves about the process and the utilizing the safest known methods to create our products. This website is for educational purposes only, and all experimentation should be done at each individuals own risk.

While I have previously written about making whole muscle cures, I have learned a lot since my initial attempts which I chronicled at the time. As I am constantly learning and adapting methods, my next few posts will discuss some of the whole muscle cures that I have made more recently, and the specific protocols or recipes that I have used. If you are looking for an overview of meat curing, please refer back to my charcuterie page introduction.

Duck Prosciutto, or prosciutto d’anatra, is a delicious cured meat product made by curing duck breasts. It can be made a few different ways, two of which I will detail here.

Duck Prosciutto is a cured meat product that many suggest as an entry level cured meat. While that may be the case due to its small size and short curing time, the layer of fat on the breast as well as traditional casing methods can complicate things. In fact, my first duck prosciutto attempt was actually my first cured meat failure. I had uneven drying, and instead if using a method to even it out, I considered it a failure and threw it out.

(I now know better, and if any of my products have uneven drying or case hardening, I make sure that I vacuum seal them and leave them in a traditional refrigerator for an unspecified period of time until they have evened out. At this point, they can be rehung until they reach the desired water weight loss point.)

A traditional duck breast is part meat, with a thick layer of fat on one side.

Because of the makeup of fat compared to protein, the fatty portion of the duck breast has less water to lose than the meat portion of the duck breast. This is important to know when deciding when a duck prosciutto is ready, since the target of 30% water weight loss might take longer than expected to reach (and in fact, may not be necessary depending on how much fat the cut really has!)

Method #1: Equilibrium Curing

Deciding on a spice cure for a duck prosciutto is 100% personal preference after the necessary additional of salt, and in my opinion, nitrates or cure #2 as I will refer to it from here on out. While some people use excess curing for duck prosciutto, I have switched over to using equilibrium curing completely. For more information on this, see the charcuterie introduction. This winter I decided to make two different duck prosciutto, one using more traditional bresaola spices and one that was a play on the French dish of duck l’orange.

Curing (2 weeks):

The duck breasts were mixed with the spice cure and vacuum sealed in a bag and allowed to equilibrate in a traditional refrigerator for the period of two weeks.

Casing (1 hour):

After the two weeks of curing was up, the duck breasts were washed off of all spices and patted dry.

They were cased in beef bungs, and wrapped in butchers netting.

If you refer to older posts, at this point, I used to do a fermentation stage for whole muscle cures. I have come to the conclusion that that is only really necessary for salami, and have stopped doing a fermentation stage for whole muscle cures.

Drying (1 month+, until 30% of weight is lost):

Temperature: 54F/12C, Humidity: 70-80% RH

After casing, the duck prosciutto was hung in the curing chamber at around 55F/12C and around 80% RH.

I have been keeping my humidity higher than I have in the past to allow to slower and more even weight loss, as well as to accommodate the cheeses that I have been keeping in the curing chamber. In this case, the traditional bresaola spiced duck breast reached 30% weight loss first and was pulled. The duck prosciutto l’orange style plateaued at a weight loss of ~25%, most likely due to its high fat content. It was pulled after it plateaued.

Tasting:

The taste test may be the best part of the whole project. The beef bung casing and netting is removed and the meat is rinsed with red wine or white vinegar (personal preference) to remove any mold that may have gotten through the casing on to the meat before being patted dry. The meat can be sliced with a deli slicer or by hand. Hopefully, the results will be heavenly.

The duck prosciutto was hand sliced with my new jamon knife, resulting in thicker slices than the deli slicer produces. Perfect for some late night duck prosciutto snacking.

Tasting of the traditional spiced duck prosciutto:

Tasting of the l’orange style duck prosciutto:

The duck prosciutto was stored in a vacuum sealed bag for snacking at a later date.

Method #2: Excess Curing

Previously, in order to make duck prosciutto I followed the method that is in a lot of the traditional literature. Excess curing is a method where the meat is packed into excess salt and spices, and allowed to cure for anywhere from 24-72 hours.

Curing: First, I did an excess salt/cure #2 and spice cure for 3 days.

Casing: Then, I wiped off then cure, and hung it in a cheesecloth casing for drying.

Drying (2 weeks+): Temperature: 54F/12C, Humidity: 70% RH

The duck breast was weighed in order to track the weight loss over time.

I tracked the weight loss over time and found that it stagnated at about 20% weight loss with some case hardening.

In order to even it out, I placed it under vacuum seal.

Tasting: After it spent some time under vacuum seal, it evened out and ended up absolutely delicious.

These are the two most common methods used to make duck prosciutto. Everyone finds methods that they prefer, and as discussed previously, I have switched to equilibrium curing and beef bungs for more even and replicable drying in the future. However, that is not to say that the excess curing method won’t work for you. Feel free to play around with your curing and create products that make you happy.