(As read and prepared by Dean Temple for the July 14, 2005 podcast.)
The spectacular adventures of cooking a duck.
I had planned on doing breast breasts on the grill really, because I was having company – and company that knows how to cook at that – and I wanted to do something different but easy and a little out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Rhinebeck’s Sunday farmer’s market, it was just before closing, and Quattros had sold out of almost everything.
My option became cooking an entire pekin duck, about 5 pounds. I admit to having been only mildly intimidated because so many people have expressed frustration with trying to cook a duck because of the mindboggling amounts of fat and the difficulty of achieving the perfect, crispy skin.
I came out of the experience, however, saying what a load of nonsense. It was pretty easy, and absolutely delicious. That said, I was a little unconventional about the whole thing.
First things first. I made a marinade out of 1.5 cups of port, 3 tablespoons of apricot preserves, salt, pepper, fresh thyme, four cloves of garlic, and just a dash of olive oil. Mixed that up, it tasted pretty good.
Next, I decided that the best approach was going to be to spatchcock this thing. So, I cut out the backbone. It’s a little different than doing this with a chicken, but if you use poultry shears and follow right up the spine between the shoulder blades of the two wing bones, it’s easy and the bird flattens out nicely. I also cut off the ends of the wings.
I let this marinate for the afternoon, flipping it over once.
I started a fire on my grill. Now, I have a canister grill that doubles as a smoker, so it has really good airflow, kind of like an adobe clay oven. I built the fire on one side of the canister (toward the air inlet) and planned to put the duck on the other side (toward the chimney, or air outlet). That way the duck got a steady flow of heat, almost like a convection oven, without too much direct exposure to the fire that would have burnt it before it cooked.
Over the course of cooking it I flipped it once, and turned it several times. And, I wouldn’t usually do this this way, but I started it skin side down, to let the fat render off for 20 minutes, then flipped it and left it on that side.
I let it cook about an hour, maybe a tad less.
In the meantime, I took the marinade and reduced it on the stove top to a thick, thick sauce.
With about 10 minutes of cooking time left, I brushed that onto the bird as a nice little glaze.
When it came off it was a beautiful reddish brown roasted color. I let it rest for while, at least 20 minutes, away from any draft, I actually just stuck it into a oven that had not been used. It had perfect crispy skin, juicy meat and just the subtlest savory sweetness from the marinade/glaze.
Easy and delicious and from a local farm. What could be better?
(7.20.05 note: I was told by the person at the market it was muscovy and reported it as such on the podcast, and later corrected at Quattros shop in Pine Plains. While they have muscovy ducks, none are available yet. It was a pekin.)