Charcutepalooza Project #1 - continued

Last night I went curling. It was a lot of fun even though we lost. We kept fighting back, but then kept letting the game get away from us...we'll get 'em next time. I got home it was about 12:30 and the duck needed to come out of the the salt and get hung up. Friday morning was going to come early.

I pulled the duck breasts out of the salt, washed them and patted them dry with paper towels. This is going to sound funny, but the breasts were noticeably firmer.I weighed them and they had each lost about 25 grams of weight. I sprinkled on some white pepper and wrapped them up in cheesecloth. Then I went to town with my bastardized knot tying. I couldn't help but think that there are pros out there that would get a good laugh at this.

The wine cooler had a not good smell to it when I opened the door. Which sucked because I had cleaned it and it was holding at an ideal temperature and humidity. So I fired up my drop-cloth-humidifier chamber and hung the breasts in there. I'm going to clean out the fridge again and hope to get the breasts in there soon. The basement is very dry right now and I can't get the humidity near the breasts above 60%. I was shooting for 70 to 75%.

Also, Michael Ruhlman mentioned this project on his blog. Turns out there are 54 like minded crazies at the beginning of the project. I'm proud to be counted as one of them. I expect more to join as the word gets out. You can find the start of this project here and here. The duck project started here.