madbaker | Duck Seasoning

This week's Resolution Recipe, at long last: Duck Salame.
This is a half recipe. Good thing, too.

5 lb duck meat (I used Moulard duck breasts - that's the breed that generally produces foie gras, so there was plenty of fat)
1/2 cup brandy
1 cup ice water
1 cup orange juice
1/2 oz fresh orange zest
1 Tbsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
1 1/2 tsp curing salt #2
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
~~1/2 tsp garlic powder~~ several cloves crushed garlic
1/2 lb dry milk (This helps keep the sausages plump as they dry)
1 tsp sugar
2" diameter summer sausage casings, soaked and rinsed (I used paper casings)

Grind the meat using a 1/2 cm plate. Mix in the brandy and let stand for 1 hour.

Place the ice water and orange juice in a container. Combine the salt, pepper, zest, curing salt, nutmeg, garlic, dry milk, and sugar; stir into the ice water and mix well. Mix into the ground meat and distribute well. Refrigerate overnight.

Tie one end of each casing with a butterfly knot; stuff casings, avoiding air pockets as possible. Close the other end with hog rings. (I don't have hog rings; they are the crimping rings you see on salame. Although if I keep making salame I probably will pick them up - for this I double-knotted butcher's twine around the end and it worked reasonably well.) Hang in the fridge to air dry for 40 days. (!)

Remove the salame and smoke until the internal temperature reaches 165. Spray with cold water to cool to 90 internally and hang, unwrapped, in the cooler. (I wrapped them in parchment and vacuum-sealed them for future use.)

What worked: We sliced a couple pieces before smoking to test. The wife said that it tasted pretty much like summer sausage, but duck-flavored. They were quite pretty in the fridge. (I basically took up the entire thing for 7 weeks to hang these.) Post-smoke - yum. The texture was similar to summer sausage with some give to it, not a really dry pork salami.

What didn't: I don't have a sausage funnel that's wide enough for these, so I basically shoveled the mixture in. The paper casings require soaking for 20 minutes before using and they were easy to work with. Unfortunately not using a funnel meant that I couldn't avoid air pockets. Also, I didn't cut the casings, which are two feet long. This meant I had to take out all the shelves in our garage fridge to give them room to hang. Also, when I smoked them I had to cut them in half to fit.

I let the smoker get too hot, even though I had ice water in the pan. The duck fat rendered out and dripped out the cut ends. This meant the salame shrank for a less-than-ideal appearance. I might have been better off using a mixture of duck breast and less-fatty duck meat. Finally, the salame didn't slice well at all; it stuck a bit to the paper casing and kind of shredded. Really good shreds, but still; I think that the rendered fat sticking to the paper is part of the problem. I'm going to try using my meat slicer on them once they're frozen. If that works then I can still have more-esthetically pleasing salame slices. Worst case, I end up with shredded duck salame that I can make into a really, really killer hash.

Will I make it again? Despite the lengthy "what didn't" above, I probably will. This is my first attempt at this sort of thing so I'm not despondent that there's lots of room for improvement.