aryanhwy | adventures in charcuterie

I've always liked cure meats -- bacon, prosciutto, parma ham, serrano, hard sausages, etc. -- and thought it would be cool to make them sometime. But a lot of what you read makes it seem like it's a complicated, highly finicky process involving things like saltpetre. Then I found this recipe for duck hams, I think via FB, and thought "hey, that looks easy!" So Joel brought back two duck breasts two weeks ago, and I happened to have quite a bit of fresh rosemary already on hand, and we tried it.

I had hoped that they'd be done in a week (as the page indicated), and then I could take them to Yule Ball to share, but what we found out was that Durham is really damp. (We bought a hygrometer. Before our dehumidifier arrived, it could get up to around 80%.) After a week, they'd each lost only 12-15%, so we hung them up again, unsure of exactly where, so they sort of rotated around the house, ending up hanging from a cupboard in the livingroom.

Yesterday I took them down to weigh them again, and immediately felt a change; they were stick and rubbery, the ends rather like jerky. I weighed them, and both had lost slightly more than 30% of their weight. I sliced a few slices, and it was delicious -- awfully salty, especially the ends, but really tasty, with both the rosemary and the thyme coming through strongly.

It was a friend's birthday party yesterday, so I sliced a large piece from the middle and wrapped it up in brown paper as a gift. Funnily enough, about 15 min. after I posted a picture of it on FB, he commented on it, "oooh, can I have some?" So it was a very apropos gift. :)

ham