The Rebbe's Ham

The Rebbe’s Ham

The title is not a mistake but an oxymoron to capture a point. My Ham is metaphorical in nature in that I am not describing the anatomy of an animal but using the word colloquially. The word ham is used here to describe preserved meat that replicates the texture, taste and appearance of Swine Ham. With that, I think a Rebbe would be happy to eat my Duck Ham.

I happen to love Duck and decided after I made Duck Prosciutto   and other duck concoctions that a Ham would be great. So what to do? I know that flavor is important and I wanted to mimic the flavors of real Ham. I decided to go with some traditional flavors that I believe would work well with duck. I have seen plenty of Ham recipes that claim to taste like honey or maple so I decided to use flavors that I think could replicate the flavors of real Ham. 

I purchased my fresh Magret duck breast online. I have had great luck with D'Artagnan which is an online company that sells a variety of meat. They have great customer service with 100% guarantee. These ducks are perfect and are large!!!


This is a  straightforward recipe that should rock your culinary taste buds. As you can tell from the ingredients list they are unique or at least I think so. I am using Demerara Sugar which is unrefined, golden brown and with hints of natural molasses flavor.  Herbs de Provence is a common ingredient in most French cuisines.  

             

Of course no recipe of this magnitude would be complete without alcohol.  I used Crown Royal Maple whiskey and gave the duck breast a 24 hours soak.

My instructions are hopefully easy to understand. First measure out all ingredients and place in separate bowls. Using a spice grinder grind up the pepper and cloves. Place duck in container large enough to hold them. Combine salt and cure together and thoroughly rub into meat getting it into every nook and cranny. 

Now combine ground up mixture with remaining ingredients and rub into duck breast. 
Again getting the rub into all the nooks and cranny's. Vacuum seal breasts and all residual spice mixture.   

I am using the equilibrium salt cure technique instead of the excess salt cure version. Using this technique avoids over salting. Equilibrium curing is the Sous-Vide of curing a coined phase by Jason Molinari. With a 12 day cure I am confident the cure will reach the center of the Duck Breast. 

After the curing process of about 12 days I am going to use Transglutaminase Activa RM to bind the meat together. I want the Duck to look more like a cylinder and to hold its shape when rolled. the Activa when applied to the Duck will allow it to become one solid muscle. 
Transglutaminase, also called meat glue, is an enzyme that can be used to bind proteins to make uniform portions of fish filet, tenderloins, etc. that cook evenly, look good and reduce waste. Transglutaminase can also be used for creative applications in modernist cuisine such as making shrimp noodles, binding chicken skin to scallops or even making checkerboards with different types of fish.  How can you do such a thing? Simply apply some transglutaminase on each side of the protein to bind, press the sides together and let it rest refrigerated for a few hours. 

After a 10 day cure the duck breast is ready.

The Duck breast was coated with Activa RM to bond the proteins together. It will need 24 hours the process to take place.

The Activa worked. One solid muscle.

Looks great!!! The picture to right shows where the seam is and I must say I am happy with the bonding action of the Activa RM.

Not sure you can tell from the picture but I slathered maple syrup on the duck.

I will cold smoke them for 2-3 hours than hot smoke until 145 degrees is reached internally.

Gratuitous pictures showing my work of art. The extra pictures are of my Duckstrami and Rebbes Ham.

Cooked to an internal temp of 145 degrees

Final thoughts- Just Amazing! Nothing else really to add. The Maple flavors were subtle and sublime.  The Activa Rm really made the Duck hold its shape without twine and in my book is a must for now on. 

Now for the gratuitous photographs. 

Muscovy Duck Pastrami

Muscovy Duck Pastrami

Yup, that's what I am making!! I've been criticized in the past for posting pictures of what we eat but that's not gonna stop me!! Most people don't know what their food looks like or where it comes from. So with my blogs I am hoping to share a little bit of insight and hopefully know how. I am not on a crusade or anything but I think we should respect the process. Oh by the way these Muscovy Duck Breasts were free range and organically raised. 

If you love beef pastrami you will love Duck pastrami. I chose Muscovy Duck Breasts to make my Pastrami. My reasoning for choosing this Species of Duck was the percentage of duck fat it carries. A Muscovy duck breast has about 18% fat, the Peking duck breast has about 29% and the Moulard is a cross between the Muscovy and the Pekin.

To be honest I wasn't planning on making pastrami with the duck but I had 8 duck breasts and I had to doing something with them. I decided, 4 for Pastrami, 2 for Prosciutto and 2 Smoked Salami's. These are original recipes so it's any one guess as to how they will turn out. Anyhow I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Note 1: The weight of meat plus fat is 100%. All ingredients to be added are expressed as a percentage of the weight of meat plus fat. Percentages can be used to standardize recipes regardless of batch size.  All weights are metric. 

Note 2: No weights are given because the weights of meats vary. Everything is a percentage of the meats weight after trimming. Example- Meat weight 2393 grams and we want to find out the amount of salt we need in grams- 2393 X 3.5%=83.755 or 2392/100 X 3.5 =83.755 grams. 

The first thing I did was measure out all the ingredients and put them in separate bowls. As you can see I used percentages based on meat weight. This makes replicating recipes very easy. Two of my ingredients make this Pastrami I think very unique. First I used Grains of Paradise instead of Black Pepper. Grains of Paradise has a peppery taste with hints of citrus. I also used Dark Muscovado Sugar instead of Brown sugar.  It's a molasses sugar that is very moist and gets its unique flavor from sugarcane juice. The other ingredients are pretty common. I decided to use a combination of spices that are common with both Beef and duck.  Heck this is just an experiment. 

The first thing I did was combine the Salt and cure together and coat both sides of the Duck Breast rubbing it into every nook and cranny. Next I combine the rest of the ingredients and thoroughly coated both sides of Duck Breast. 

I Vacuumed sealed the breast and plan on flipping them every day for a week. At the end of the week it will be cured. I used equilibrium curing instead of excess salt curing. Excess salt curing is a technique where you cover the meat entirely in salt. 




Equilibrium curing is using exact amounts needed for the cure. 
"This method would be the Sous-Vide cooking of the curing world". Jason Molinari

Procedures after the curing process. Remove breast from bag and rinse under cold water removing as much as the cure as you can. Pat dry and apply Rub below.

Place the Grains of Paradise, Coriander, Juniper Berries, and Cloves (if using whole) and grind in a spice grinder. 

Apply Rub to both sides of the Duck.

Place Duck breast on smoker. I cold smoke breasts at an ambient temp outside of about 55 degrees using Apple pellets for about 2 1/2 hours.  I used a cold smoking device called A-MAZE-N-PELLET-SMOKER. 

After the cold smoking process I hot smoke the breast using charcoal and apple wood. Starting at a very low temp below 200 degrees and slowing bring it up to 225, I smoke the duck breasts until an internal temp of 145 degrees was reached. 

After they were done smoking I decided to Sous-Vide the breasts for 2 hours at 145 degrees to tenderize them. 

Final thoughts.  They were amazing and spot on. The only thing I would change is maybe is smoking them until an internal temp of 135 is reached instead of 145 degrees. 

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Maple Bacon Bomb

Crown Royal Maple Bacon Bomb

Who doesn't like Crown Royal or Bacon? These are two winning combinations if you ask me!! My inspiration for this combo occurred to me while eating a BLT and sipping on Bourbon. And of course I was watching the food channel too. Anyhow, I thought, I like Bourbon, whiskey and of course I love bacon why not combine them. 

"A Marriage made in Heaven" 

I think this is a winning combination!!
Now that being said can I possibly improve on my Heavenly Bacon? Well of course I can. "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often" Winston Churchill


I decided to use boneless short ribs for this bacon because it contains lots of fat and is readily available. I love Short Ribs. I purchased my short ribs at Costco. Costco has a pretty good selection of meat but finding the right pieces can be tricky. I remember asking one of the meat cutters for the fattiest Short Rib he had and with a puzzling look fulfilled my request. 

This is one of the simplest Bacon's I have ever made.  In previous posts My Love of Bacon  and Heavenly Bacon I went into a lot more detail about the whole process and the array of ingredients were much larger too. As you can tell the ingredients are not many but what I do have is very unique. This is a simple Maple Bacon that uses Crown Royal Maple as a main ingredient and Maple Sugar. When it is finished curing and smoking it should be the Bomb hence the name.  

All I did to make this simple bacon was to measure out the Salt and cure and rub it into every nook and cranny of the meat. I then combined the rest of the ingredients and placed in vacuumed sealed bags. 

Meat all Vacuumed sealed and awaiting a 21 day cure.  After the curing process I will cold smoke meat with Apple for 6 hours.  

Rumified Bacon Bomb

Rumified Bacon Bomb!!!!!!!

I was thinking the other day about Rum and all the great recipes that are made with it and I thought to my self why not bacon. If you can make Rum Balls with it why not bacon!!! Think about it for a moment Spice Rum and meat sounds like a match made in Heaven. Rum is great in anything. If it's good enough to drink it will be undeniably great in food. Anyhow that is my hope anyway. 

I decided to use boneless short ribs for this bacon because it contains lots of fat and is readily available. 

So what goes well with a Spiced Rum? After tasting the rum I came up with some ideas that I think will work. Spiced Rum reminded me of cookies. Hmm, that sparked an idea!! So I Googled spiced cookies and found recipes for Pumpkin, Ginger, Molasses and Spiced cookies. All these recipes were similar with just some minor ratio differences in their ingredients. So what is going to go in my bacon? I decided to use those same ingredients in my bacon. 

Note 1: The weight of meat plus fat is 100%. All ingredients to be added are expressed as a percentage of the weight of meat plus fat. Percentages can be used to standardize recipes regardless of batch size.  All weights are metric. 

Note 2: No weights are given because the weights of meats vary. Everything is a percentage of the meats weight after trimming. Example- Meat weight 2393 grams and we want to find out the amount of salt we need in grams- 2393 X 3.5%=83.755 or 2392/100 X 3.5 =83.755 grams. 

What makes my Rumified Bacon Bomb so unique is the ingredients. I used Muscovado Sugar  which is way better than brown sugar I think. It is used to make Rum which is why I chose it for this recipe   I also used Cassia Cinnamon Bark too. Ahh, and my secret weapon was the Spiced Rum of course.   

So what did I do?  I combined the Salt, Cure #1, and dextrose and rubbed it deep into the meat. 

I used a spice grinder and ground up the Cinnamon Bark, Whole cloves and Whole Allspice which is shown in the picture to the left. I combined the Dark Muscovado sugar and the now ground up Cinnamon, Cloves and Allspice and rubbed it into the meat. 



Meat Vacuumed sealed and will cure for 21 days. I will than cold smoke meat for 6 hours using Apple. 

All done curing and rinsed off. They are drying off to develop a Pellicle. Developing a good pellicle is important because it helps the smoke adhere to the meat during the smoking process. 

Getting ready to smoke the bacon with Apple on my Weber smokey mountain. 

Just started the Apple Smoke. I am cold smoking the Bacon with Applet pellets. The ambient temperature outside was about 55 degrees. I am using the A-MAZE-N cold smoker. 

The bacon smoked for 6 1/2 hours. Notice the difference in colors. Contrast the meat from where it started until now. 

Final thoughts. If you like spiced Rum you will love this Bacon. I will make it again!!!!!

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