Today I’m going to show you how to make your own smoked duck breast. With a moderate amount of effort, you can achieve a super tasty result.
Smoked duck breast combines a fine smoky aroma with winter spices such as cloves and cinnamon. Whether as a starter, a fine main course or an ingredient in a salad – it adds a festive and special touch to any dish.
You can smoke the duck breast cold or hot. You can find both options in my article.
Here you can find the complete smoked duck breast recipe as a video or to read through.
Have fun and good luck making it!
Table of Contents
Smoked duck breast – What do you need to make it?
Ingredients per 1 kg
- 100 % smoked duck breast (1000 g)
Spices per kg
- 27.5 g salt
- 2.5 Cure #1
- 2 g sugar mixture (50 % dextrose / 50 % sugar)
- 1.75 g black pepper
- 0.75 g clove
- 0.5 g ginger powder
- 0.5 g cinnamon
The equipment to make smoked duck breast
Smoker
You will need the smoker to smoke your duck breast.
Smoking auger / cold smoke generator (for cold smoking option)
With the cold smoking option, you also need a smoking auger. It ensures that you have continuous smoke in the smoker for 12 hours.
Make smoked duck breast yourself – Step-By-Step Instructions
1. Coarsely grind all the spices in a mortar. You can also use a spice grinder for this.
2. Pour the spice mixture over the duck breast and distribute the spices evenly on all sides of the duck breast.
3. Place the duck breast in a bag. Make sure that all the spices end up in the bag.
4. Vacuum seal the duck breast and place the bag in the refrigerator for the minimum curing time (1.5 days / cm meat thickness). Turn the bag occasionally. You can also cure your piece of meat for longer, but not shorter.
5. Pat the duck breast dry with a kitchen towel.
6. Then insert a hook into the cured piece of meat. This will make it easier to hang up afterwards. Alternatively, you can also tie the duck breast with kitchen twine and hang it up.
First the hot-smoked version:
7. Hang your duck breast in the smoker and dry it for approx. 30 minutes at 50 °C (122 °F) without smoke.
8. After 30 minutes, increase the temperature to 80 °C (176 °F) and continue smoking the duck breast until it has reached a core temperature of approx. 65 – 70 °C (149.0°F – 158 °F).
9. Your smoked duck breast is ready.😄 Enjoy it!
Cold smoking duck breast – how it works
As an alternative to hot smoking, you can also cold smoke your duck breast.
The process is the same up to step 6.
After that, the process changes…
7. Hang the cured duck breast at room temperature (approx. 20 degrees) for 24 – 48 hours so that it can dry.
8. You can now hang the duck breast in the smoker and smoke it cold for 2 passes*. Ideally, the temperature in the smoker should be between 15 and 20 degrees.
*One cycle means 12 hours of smoke and 12 hours of no smoke.
9. After the passes, your cold-smoked duck breast is ready 😄. Enjoy it.
How long is the shelf life of the smoked duck breast ?
Your duck breast will keep for about a week in the fridge. The alternative is to vacuum-seal the duck breast in portions. It should keep for 2-3 weeks in the fridge if vacuum-sealed. You can also freeze it. This increases the shelf life many times over.