After literally years of lurking on egullet, here's a first post and my first go at charcuterie. So please, be gentle I made the Ruhlman duck prosciutto using Pekin breasts and would love thoughts on it. The only real substitution I made was milled black instead of white pepper. After a 24hr salt cure, I air cured at about 68F and 20% humidity for about 7 days: I cut them down when they felt firm but also hit about 30% reduction from the original wet pre-salt-cure weight. Overall, I loved it and won high praise from family and friends, but I'm more curious about anyone's thoughts on the shortcomings. With the Prosciutto di Parma I've bought at the market and eaten over the years as a flavor and texture reference point, I found this duck prosciutto was just slightly too briny and peppery. Other than doing a better job rubbing off the salt cure and pepper, I'm not sure what I could have done differently? Less salt cure and more air cure? Also, the very top layer of the meat side of the breast is tasty but is drier than I would like and is slighly "jerkied". It's only about 2mm think but causes a slightly stringy texture. I think this may be due to the low humidity (20%) environment in which it air cured? It occurs to me that placing the two sides of the breast meat-sides together when air curing might reduce this, but I'm unsure how that might change the rest of the cure. Also, the skin had a slightly stringy texture, too. Is scoring the skin generally advised? Finally, it's hard to see in the picture, but some parts of the fat layer are fully opaque and others translucent. I'm curious what thoughts are out there for what is a 'best' level of the cure. Also, any thoughts about how scoring would alter the curing of the skin/fat. Thanks!