Smoked Duck Breast (Magret Fumé)

Hi again..

Here is the recipe I will be using this weekend as I test out the Cardboard Box Smoker. Its pretty simple and gives very good results.

Ingredients

12 Duck Breasts / Magrets de Canard
5 Kg Sea Salt / Gros Sel
Pepper / Poivre

Method

Place a 2cm layer of the salt into a large glass baking tray (for smaller quantities) or the bottom of a good solid cooler box.

Clean the duck breasts taking care to remove any bloody bits.


Rub each breast throughly on the flesh side and sides with salt, then lay flesh side down in the tray.

Repeat until the tray is full (don't overfill a shallow dish, you need space for more salt).

Once all the breasts are well salted, cover the whole lot with yet more salt.

Pack the salt in well around the breasts, adding more salt if needed so it just covers the surface of the fatty sides of the breasts.

Cover with a tea towel and either leave them 18 to 24 hrs in the bottom of the fridge. If using a cooler box, you can add freezer blocks over the whole caboddle and store them out of harms way. In winter a cold place, say a garage or a barn can substitute for the fridge!

Once the time is up and the breasts are nicely salt cured, take them out of the salt and rinse very throughly before wiping dry.

Grind a little pepper onto the flesh side of the breasts.

Other nice flavour additions can be made before drying. Applying a mixture of honey with a little Cognac, Calvados or Madeira to the breasts before drying is a classy touch. Multi colored pepper corns can also be used to make things look even more attractive. The two magrets to the right were glazed with 50/50 clear honey and Madera.

Now you need to leave the breasts to throughly air dry for 18 - 24 hrs or more.The best way to do this is to hang each magret on a bacon or fish hanger, like those in the photo. These are very handy for all sorts of smoking, where you need to suspend the meat rather than leaveing it on a tray (the bars leave marks and does not smoke so uniformly. If you don't have any, don't worry, bending and putting a point on some heavy gauge wire will do the job adequately. Butchers S's could also be used but only give you one holding point...which may lead to tearing.

Once the breasts are nice and dry they are ready for the smoker.

Cold Smoking the Duck 

For this recipe we want to smoke at a low temperature, we don't want the breasts going over 25°C. The lower the better, we want to avoid losing any of the precious fat. Simple enough with electric smoker with a thermostatic control but with a charcoal or wood fire it can be more difficult to keep a constant temperature. Thats why I prefer to use just a small bowl of smoldering charcoal to feed the smoker, then I only have to worry about ambient temperatures.

The magrets will need a good 12 hrs to 18 hrs of smoke, according to how smoky you like them. Low and slow is the best tempo for cold smoking, which is why it is traditionally a winter occupation in temperate climates...try cold smoking at 10°C here in the middle of summer...it ain't going to happen!!!

Once cold smoked you have two options.....

The duck can either be further smoked but this time at a higher temperature...100 - 120°C... to cook them until their internal temp hits 72°C. In this case they can be eaten hot and fresh from the smoker or cooled to room temperature then stored in the fridge for up to a week....or they could be frozen for a good couple of months without much loss of quality..esp when vacuum packed.


Above: Smoked with a honey and madera glaze (left) and plain smoked (right)

To preserve them longer and to further dry them to get to the mouthmeltingly wonderous smoky ducky heaven stage, they should be hung and air dried for a week or more. The length of time depends a lot upon the temp and humidty of the place they are dried in...preferably you want somewhere at about 10-14°C with a high relative humidty that can be reduced slowly as the breasts dry (as with dried sausage and salami making).

For this most cellars are pretty good, if truly underground, even relatively damp ones. Some use garages or even outdoors under the porch for drying but drying will take longer and may be a little uneven.

Once dried they keep for a good while...I cant say how long, they never stick around long enough or they get vacuum packed as presents. Vacuum packing will allow non refrigerated storage for at least six months to a year.