So much for the original plan. The Co-Op only had frozen duck and they were clearly duck that was fresh last week. They were also very lightly wrapped and ice crystals had formed. I was tempted to buy one anyway, but they just looked to have lost too much quality. The meat manager wasn't there so I left her a voice mail asking when the next fresh ducks would arrive. She promptly returned my call and gave me the bad news. The Christmas ducks were the last round of fresh duck until June. Makes sense - snow covered ground, migration, blah, blah, blah. Time to formulate a new plan.
The last time I was at the Asian Market on Central, the ducks look a little old. Plus they were never as gorgeous as the ones at the Co-Op last week. The Troy Farmers Market was out since it was going to be too late for me to make a January 15th deadline. I ended up with frozen breasts from Roma in Latham. I scored one breast and not the other to see if it made a difference. Then I weighed the two breasts and jotted down the pre-cure weight on a piece of paper that I stole from one of my daughters (hope you like it, Jane!) and put them in the salt. They will get weighed again and hung up to dry later tonight.
Jon, you are officially my new hero :D
ReplyDeleteBwahahahaha! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteI just got Ruhlman's book on Charcuterie, and the husbear was flipping his gourd over the duck prosciutto. I'm not too confident in my curing/hanging abilities (too much temp fluctuation in my apt), but I'm definitely going to give hot smoking stuff a try. I'm really interested in how your duck turns out!