The Cure · Starter
Duck Prosciutto
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile.
Ingredients
- 1 duck breast, 350-400 g, skin on
- 600 g coarse sea salt
- 4 g black peppercorns, cracked
- 2 g thyme leaves
- 1 bay leaf, crumbled
The skills inside
Brining & curingStraining & passing through a sieveResting meat & slicing against the grain
The words inside
Duck Prosciutto (Magret Séché)
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Bury the breast in the salt in a non-reactive dish, covered above and below, and refrigerate 24 hours for a 350 g breast, 30 for a heavy magret. 600 min
- Rinse every grain of salt off, pat bone dry, and weigh it now: this is the number every later weighing is measured against.
- Rub with the pepper, thyme and bay, wrap in a double layer of muslin, tie, and hang somewhere 12-15C (54-59F) with air moving over it.
- Weigh it every few days. It is finished at 30% loss from that post-cure weight, usually 10 to 21 days, when the thick end feels like the heel of your hand.
- Slice across the grain, thin enough to see light through.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir (the classic)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais (Morgon)
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Black cherry spritz
Acid and silk against duck fat: the oldest marriage in Burgundy, with Gamay as its cheerful younger witness.
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