recipes for salted or cured duck

Inviting all recipes for salted or cured duck.  Can be for entire or parts of duck.  All cuisines too!

I bought a wonderful salted duck leg from my Asian market.  I steamed it for 30 minutes and then roasted it for 10 minutes to crisp the skin.  The duck is literally like prosciutto in terms of texture and even taste.  I would love to know how they cured it.  I

I would also love to know Dartagnan's (the duck company) duck prosciutto recipe.  They sell the best duck prosciutto!!

Wow, that sounds amazing! I love prosciutto. It's past the season for this, but I saw an elegant combination of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears, drizzled with olive oil, fresh salt and pepper and roasted in the oven. Does the salted and cured duck slice thin enough for something like that?

Yum...your description of that appetizer had me salivating over my keyboard!!!

d'Artagnan sells their duck prosciutto in both whole and sliced form.  Go to the link below and do a search on duck prosciutto to see both varieties.

http://www.dartagnan.com

The sliced prosciutto is medium - think sliced (as opposed to paper thin almost falling apart).  It could easily be used for that delicious dish that you described!!! 

The salted Chinese duck leg only came in whole but I cut the meat of the bone (after cooking it for 30 minutes) and cubed it.  I served it with blanched almonds and buttered green beans.  I was cooking dinner for some unadventurous eaters who like 'plain country cooking'.  I thought the duck would add a twist on the normal 'bacon and green beans dish'.

Please feel free to share any other duck prosciutto dishes/recipes

We make the "prosciutto" or "Magret seché" easily like this :

Salt duck breast for three days then wash the salt off and pepper the duck and leave it to dry for two days.



Dry wipe off excess pepper and slice finely



The duck will keep for about a week somewhere cool (but not a fridge) covered with a dry cloth.

Thank you Hardworkinghippy for recipe for Magret seché  - it looks scrumptious!!!

A few questions:

What kind of salt do you use - or does it matter?

Storage temperature for drying out period...our house is usually about 70-74 degrees.  I don't want to dry the duck in the basement because it often reeks of gasoline (my husband has several car projects going on).  I don't want the gasoline odors to permeate the duck!Could I store it on the first floor in a closet .....next best thing to the basement?

Thank you so much for posting your recipe and pictures!!!

We use sea salt - you know the chunky one just because it's really cheap and we buy it in bulk. I've never used fine table salt.

If you have somewhere covered outside to hang the duck that's ideal - either under house eaves or in a shed with open windows. Cover it with muslin and don't let it sweat too much. The temperature isn't too important as long as there's good air circulation.

We keep all our salted meat outside under a roof where there's almost always some wind and our hams have lasted well for two years.

That just looks so delicious!!!

@ Irene Knightly - that does look delicious. Did you use a Pekin type duck or a Muscovy? I'm specifically looking for Muscovy duck recipes, and they contain far less fat than any of the Pekins do. In fact I *really* want to try making "Corned Muscovy" instead of "Corned Beef" as soon as I can source the "pink salt" the recipe calls for. If any Permies out there have tried this, I'd love to hear how it went, and any advice they're willing to give.

We have Muscovy ducks.

Pink salt isn't very different to normal salt, it might have a few more minerals but I wouldn't wait to try the recipe because you can't find Himalayan salt Jay.

Muscovies aren't fatty normally but like most ducks, they fatten themselves up for winter. We kill ours around the winter solstice and get some lovely foie gras - without having to stuff them.

Irene Kightley wrote:

Pink salt isn't very different to normal salt.

Actually, "pink salt" seems to be an American name for Curing Salt #1 which contains ~3% nitrite so it isn't anything like the pink Himalayan salt. In places they add a pink dye so that people don't accidentally confuse it with table salt as that could actually be dangerous. The curing salt only makes up a small proportion of the total salt used in the brine the recipe soaks the meat in.

Luckily, a local restaurant directed us to their local cured meat supplier, and they were willing to sell me a small quantity of it, enough to try the recipe a couple of times. Yippee!

This is a link to the recipe I was going to try: https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-make-corned-beef-from-scratch/
The brine ingredients are:
1 gallon water
1-1/2 cups kosher salt
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup mixed pickling spices, divided
4 teaspoons pink curing salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 fresh beef brisket (4 to 5 pounds)

They have you soak the meat in plastic bags, but I'm inclined to use the crock I've got or a glass jar, as I'd prefer to avoid plastic if an alternative will work.

Now if the weather will improve enough that I can process the 9 extra female Muscovy that should already have had their, "one bad day", I'll be all set to try this. Our region only gets snow about every 3 years - this year was it!

Ooops, sorry Jay.

I got that completely wrong didn't I ?

@ Irene Kightly - Not a problem. I am well aware that they call things different names and do things differently in different countries. For example what we call a zucchini, the British call a courgette. That's why when talking plants, I so appreciate when people add the scientific name so that we're sure we're talking about the same plant!

I'll post an update when I get a chance to try the recipe.

Corned Duck update:  Yesterday I processed 8 female Muscovy ducks, just cutting them open and harvesting the breast meat and the leg-thigh combos. It's a shame, but they're *really* hard to hand pluck and we've still got snow so no running water where I process. My gift to the compost gods. I also made up ~ 1/2 the above recipe.
Today I took a crock that fits an old slow cooker, and I layered the duck legs and the brine pretty much to the top and had ~2 cups of brine left. I put a plate on top to hold the meant below the brine. The recipe I read that claimed that meat with bones was OK, suggested also that 5 days was enough, probably due to the thinner cuts of meat being used.

I'll keep you posted as the experiment continues!

Corned Duck Update: I made sure that every couple of days I used a spatula to stir the brine/meat combo in the crock. The recipe said to rinse the meat, add carrots, celery and onion and more pickling spice and to cook in a Dutch oven for 3 hours. The recipe wasn't for Muscovy duck though. I decided it was safer to use my slow cooker and give them about 6 hours and that was a good choice. From the smell, I also did not add more pickling spice. The original recipe was for a 5 lb chunk of meat. Skinny duck legs were able to absorb much more as the surface area to volume is so different. The meat was really popular, but the veggies weren't - "corned" vegetables was just too weird for the audience I was serving. The leftovers were *really* nice both in sandwiches and open faced on wasa bread with goat cheese.

Irene Kightley wrote:We have Muscovy ducks.
...

Just what is in that picture besides the liver? And what do you do with the other parts/organs?

Hi Zoe, Welcome to Permies!
The liver is the most obvious thing in the picture that's edible. Attached to it you will find the gall bladder which produces compounds used to help digest things - particularly fats. It is *really* important to get it cut off without spilling the green liquid onto the edible parts, as it will cause anything it touches to taste foul. The liver in the picture looks pale to me - was this a healthy bird?
The rest that I see in the picture is the intestines. Cutting them causes disease risks, but the picture shows them to be intact - that's good! Possibly hiding under them you'll find a hard round ball that's the gizzard. Some people thoroughly clean it inside and out and eat it, but I admit I've usually got too little time to deal with it. http://www.poultryhub.org/physiology/body-systems/digestive-system/
Somewhere, near the liver, smaller but looking similar, is the spleen. I normally toss it with the intestines.
The heart is usually higher up in the cavity and may not have been removed with the intestines. I will either add the heart to the liver if making pate, or to soup. Its flavour is stronger than the rest of the meat, but the heart is a muscle, just like the breasts and thighs.
How much of the bird you eat depends on a number of factors. I don't have the best set-up for processing, and with the bad weather we had this winter, I didn't even have running water for some birds I was doing. That effects decisions. If you can't process fast enough and get things cold enough quickly, I'd advise that you take the most valuable parts and consider the rest a gift to the compost gods or whatever you choose to call returning valuable nutrients to the soil that produced the bird in the first place. Under ideal conditions, I use as much of the bird as I can. Necks, feet and wings of muscovy make wonderful bone broth that's important for keeping my bones healthy and strong.
Taking more pictures from different angles would help. I may be able to get pictures taken and posted in the future if you or others would find that helpful, but I'm out of province doing family care for several more weeks so it won't happen soon.