What you need
- duck breasts
- salt
- sugar
- congnac
- pepper
- cheesecloth, butcher's twine
Using the duck breasts I harvested from the duck for the duck rillettes, I made some duck proscuitto.
Make a 50/50 mixture of salt and sugar
Rub all over the breasts
Toss into a zip lock bag and pour in the extra salt/sugar
Put in the fridge for a couple of days
Pour out the accumulated liquid once a day or whenever you feel like it
Rinse off the sugar/salt and pat dry
Rub with some cognac (brandy, whiskey, burbon, sherry - whatever)
Sprinkle some pepper
Wrap each breast in cheesecloth
Using butcher's twine, tie each one up and dangle it from a fridge shelf
Let it dry for a couple weeks
You can then liberate it and slice very thinly. Put it on some crackers and cream cheese.
Chop it up and sprinkle it on a salad like bacon bits.
Or just chew on it like jerky - you are your own master.
This all began when I went to Chinatown to pick up a duck. Now normally I do a whole duck butterflied in a large baking dish so the flesh confits itself - but that will be another post. This time I wanted to make Rillettes de Canard.
So, whole duck. I harvested the breasts to make some duck proscuitto. Since this bird came from Chinatown, it had feet, head, the whole shebang. I harvested all the big bones for stock. What I was left with was legs (bone in), wings (yes with bones), skin, miscellanous scraps of meat.
Toss all the meat into a pressure cooker
Add salt and pepper and cooked that sucker at pressure for a couple of hours
Let it cool down, don't be too eager
Scrape the meat from the bones (keep the bones for stock)
Take the skin and crisp it up in a frying pan
Used a mesh strainer to get duck fat out of the meat (keep the confit)
Shred the meat in a bowl
Chop up the crispy skin and add that to the meat
Add cognac, chopped parsley, salt, pepper and orange zest
Spoon the mixture into ramekins and push it down with a fork to create a level surface
Spoon the duck fat onto the ramekins until there is about a 1/4 inch of fat over the meat
Put in the fridge and don't touch for two days
Now, you make some toast points. Slice up some cornichon (baby dills). Fork on some Rillettes to the toast. Put a pickle on top. OMG.
What you need
- A duck
- cognac
- chopped parsley
- orange zest
- salt and pepper
- toast points and cornichon for the eating
