Say It With Me Now: Duck Ham!

It's really a shame that this is probably the single most uninspiring food photo that I've ever posted, because it doesn't do justice to the wonderful root vegetable soup and duck ham that I made yesterday.

"Duck ham" is quick-cured duck breast. I just love saying it. Duck ham!

The idea is that you wrap a duck breast in a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, garlic, thyme, and black pepper for 24 hours and out comes something like a very young prosciutto. Since the recipe for duck ham(!) doesn't involve an oven or a stove, it might be tempting to say but it's raw, it's raw poultry. Danger. It's not raw though -- it's cured.

Here's the thing: the definition of "cooking" is manipulating ingredients chemically. I don't know if that's what it says when you look "cooking" up in the dictionary, but that's what chefs mean when they use the word. When home cooks talk about cooking they're pretty much always talking about heat. But curing is cooking too: salt and sugar draw the water out of meat (osmosis, heard of it?), and dehydrated meat cannot host bacteria, because bacteria need water to survive. Ergo, the meat is safe to eat.

Once the duck was done curing yesterday, I sliced it as thin as possible, but to be honest it was still a little bit too gummy and wet for my taste to eat plain (none of you will be surprised to hear that The Viking sucked it down just fine). But it was perfect as a compliment to the rustic, earthy roasted root vegetable soup.

Root vegetables, roasted almost to the point of burning along with a duck or a chicken, are some of my favorite things to eat in the fall/winter months. This soup captures exactly that flavor in liquid form, which shouldn't be a surprise given the ingredients (root vegetables; chicken stock). Somehow, it was still amazing to me how complex and evocative of a mid-winter dinner the soup was. It's roasted chicken and root vegetables for people who are too lazy to chew. Relatedly, this would be amazing as baby food.

Both recipes are from Tom Colicchio's Think Like A Chef. If you want the full recipes, I encourage you to buy the book here. If you want the executive summaries, see below.


Duck Ham

Remove most of that fat from a duck breast, leaving just a thin protective coating. Mix 1 cup Kosher salt, 3 Tablespoons sugar, 1 Tablespoon thyme leaves, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 Tablespoon black pepper. Put half the salt mixture on a piece of plastic wrap, lay the duck breast on top, and cover the breast with the remaining mixture. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for 24 hours. Remove from the fridge, gently rinse the breast, and pat dry.


Roasted Root Vegetable Soup

Put some oil in a big stew pot (think 5 - 6 quart). Peel, slice, and add the following: 1 parsnip, 1/2 bulb fennel, 1 carrot, 1 small butternut squash, 1 leek (white part only), 1/2 granny smith apple, 1 clove garlic. Let veggies soften, add a knob of butter and a sprig of thyme, let soften further. Add 3 cups of chicken stock gradually, bring to a simmer, and simmer partially covered for 40 minutes. Then puree, thin with another cup of stock, and salt and pepper to taste. Sherry is not called for in the recipe, but indeed would not be out of place.