Likes: 
Here it is. The duck prosciotto.
One wants to lose a minimum of 30% of the original weight. I stopped air drying at around 37% loss. It was still somewhat difficult to cut and not as dry as I would have liked. Next time I might push it out towards 45%. Being duck though, I will probably never get it as dry as a pork product.
I used a traditional prosciutto spice mix. I blended fennel, coriander and black pepper. It is good, but a little strong. Next time I will use less, or quite possibly none at all. Except for my version of Montreal smoked beef, I tend to like my own cured meats to taste mostly of the meat, the cure and the smoke( when used).
My last niggle is that in the past I have had some difficulty getting duck cured in the desired amount of time, due to the density of both the fat and the meat. To try to get ahead of that, I made way too many cuts in the skin, which made slicing it unnecessarily difficult. Also, three days in salt is more than enough time to cure bigger duck breasts than I use.
I think people that make this call it prosciutto because it follows the same procedures, salt cure, completely uncooked and air dried. It isn't prosciutto. The meat is simply too moist to really be prosciutto unless one has enough humidity control to air dry it for months. I am simply using my fridge. Anything over three weeks in there is likely to get very dangerous, possibly fatal.
Now to the good part.
It is delicious! I will continue to experiment with it.
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Originally Posted by geoffbot
