Duck Confit and Prosciutto

One of the best things about butchering day…

The big mess of fried heart the next day. In this case fried in butter with onion, pepper and garlic.

Evie and Winnie are both fans of it. Seppi is not. Ellie thinks that it is about the worst thing that ever happened.

The daikon radishes bolted into a glorious mass of white and purple blossoms. The blossoms are forming into seed pods. We could let those dry out and then save them to plant next year, or even just let them fall to the ground and self-seed. Instead, we pick them and eat them. They have a slightly peppery radish flavor and a delightful snap, kind of like a spicy green bean.

You can also stirfry them (they sometimes pop like popcorn) with bok choi and Swiss chard, and garnish it with nasturtium blossoms.

This is also a great way to torture the Ellie-Belle.

Mixing up spices for seasoning the duck bits.

Winnie is pretty sure that no task will go right if she is not involved in it.

Monday morning, June 2nd, we dredged the 8 duck breasts in the salt/spice mix, and put them in a bus tub with holes in the bottom, which was inside another bus tub without holes.

We did the same with the legs and wings (different spice mix, this one is for confit)

And put the bus tub with the necks and carcasses on top of that.

First step on Tuesday, June 3rd, was rendering down the visceral fat we took from the ducks.

This is pretty straightforward. Just start out slow, and keep it going low and slow. If it gets too hot it will start to burn the impurities.

But you don’t want to burn those impurities, you want to strain them out, first through cheesecloth…

Then through a paper towel. This gives you very clear golden brown liquid duck fat, and cracklings, which are nothing more than the fibrous connective tissue that holds the fat deposits together, deep fried in fat.

We ate them with our salad because that makes them healthy.

It was here I realized that I had made an error in judgement.

The section on Confit in this book has two separate recipes, one a traditional recipe for preserving confit either canned in jars, or in earthenware under a layer of lard. The other is for confit that will be eaten immediately. The authors note that for preserving confit it is necessary to use only salt, no other spices, as these could be a source of contamination.

I used the other recipe. The one for eating immediately.

My plan had been to confit the legs and then can them for use later, but now I had to adjust fire. So instead I bagged them in shrink bags, and put them in the freezer, uncooked.

About 7 1/2 Lbs between the two of them, so broke it into two bags, with four legs and four wings each. We can do one bag at a time for a family meal, or both at once for a Lord’s Day supper.

Next we turned our attention to the duck breasts. I want to try to prosciutto them similar to how I did with the lamb leg, but they are such small cuts of meat this will be a much faster process. Also, we are going to be gone for most of it, so…

We get one shot at this.

The breasts were salted and spiced for one day. The bus tub they are in has holes in the bottom of it, so the fluid that the salt pulls out can run through it into the tub underneath.

Like this.

Thoroughly rinse all salt and spices off the breast, and then pat it dry.

Roll in cheese cloth, tie (VERY tightly) with butcher’s twine, continuous tie.

Some of the tenders (the little strip of muscle on the underside of the breast) fell off, so I bagged those and fried them up for supper. They were… very salty. Three of the breasts I bagged and froze, and 5 were wrapped for dry curing.

We have a new old broken fridge in the basement. It does not cool, but the fan runs. We are going to try this as a curing chamber. So far the temp in the basement has hovered right around sixty (ideal temp 55 to 65 degrees) and the humidity is higher than it was all winter, so we might get a decent slow cure.

We weighed and labeled each breast, and then put two in the fridge to cure and hung the other three from the rafters.

And in 2-3 weeks, we’ll see how they turn out.