That’s Just Ducky

Although I love duck I find it easiest to buy a duck breast at Fresh Market and then pan roast it. Nevertheless, I roasted a whole duck a few weeks ago. Something I hadn’t done in several years. It was wonderful. The technique I used is essentially the way duck is prepared for Peking duck (which is a dish and not the same thing as the Pekin duck breed).

Duck is notoriously fatty and while the fat is wonderful stuff you need to draw most of it out if you want an edible bird. When I pan roast breasts I can trim off excess fat and then score the skin and I can do the same thing when cooking legs as in this recipe for Canard au Vin. But it’s more problematic for a whole duck.

The best way I know to do it is to simmer the whole duck after poking holes in the skin to allow the fat to escape as it melts. You’ll need a large stockpot and it’s a two-part process, but the two parts result in that most luscious of lipids (duck fat) and a wonderful broth you can use for cooking beans or making soup.

Roast Duck
Makes 4 to 6 servings.

1 5-6 pound duck
1 large yellow onion — peeled, trimmed and quartered
2 large carrots — cut into 1-inch lengths
2 medium stalks of celery — cut into 1-inch lengths
Large handful of flat-leaf parsley with stems
12 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 large cloves garlic
2 tablespoons dried orange zest (you can find dried zest in the spice department)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons dried, ground rosemary
1 orange, washed and cut into 8ths
1 small onion — peeled, trimmed and quartered
2 cloves garlic

Defatting:
Remove giblets from duck cavity and cut off wing tips.

Using a small paring knife, poke holes all over the duck’s breast, legs and back. Insert the knife at an angle to avoid penetrating the meat — figure you have 1/4 inch of fat beneath the skin on the breasts and thighs and about 1/8 inch on the legs and back — but insert as deeply as possible without making a cut more than about 1/2 inch long.

Place the duck in a large stockpot, add onion, carrots, celery, neck and wing tips. Add enough water to completely cover duck. Remove duck from pot, add parsley, bay leaves and peppercorns and place pot over high heat. Bring to a boil skimming off any scum that forms.

Carefully return duck to pot and bring back to a boil then immediately reduce heat to a simmer. Place a plate with a heavy can on top of the duck to keep it submerged and simmer for 45 minutes, removing any additional scum as it forms but allowing fat to accumulate.

Remove duck and pat dry, being careful to avoid tearing skin. Cool to room temperature. At this point you can move on to roasting, or you can refrigerate the duck on a dish, uncovered, which forces some additional fat out as the skin contracts and produces a crispier skin.

Refrigerate the stock you’ve made overnight. The fat will rise to the top and you can skim that off and save it frozen for up to a year. The stock can be reduced (concentrated) and used for making gravy (with some of the duck fat) or reserved for other uses (there’s no salt in it and it’s simply flavored to keep it flexible for other dishes).

Roasting:
If you refrigerated the bird, remove from fridge and warm on the counter for 3 hours. Heat oven to 500 degrees, place an oven rack one level up from the bottom and heat a roasting pan that can hold a roasting rack. Don’t heat the rack.

Mix together orange zest, salt, pepper and rosemary. Sprinkle half the mixture inside duck and sprinkle remaining on the outside, patting to make it stick. Stuff cavity with orange, onion and garlic and roast for 30 minutes (rotate front to back after 15 minutes). Remove from oven and let rest 15 minutes before carving.

Note: Save the duck bones and the back, add them to the reserved duck stock and simmer it for another couple of hours to make a richer stock. Certainly save the fat for other cooking projects.

Try roast duck with…
Potatoes Savoyard
Beets Dijonaise
Blueberry Crisp

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