1 ea Whole dressed Duck, 7lbs
1/3 c Jufran brand banana sauce
1/3 c Thai 'Hot-Sweet' sauce
1/4 c Datu Puti brand soy sauce
1 ea Large white onion, 'sweet'
I've been wanting to cook a Duck since I was in college but my skills
at the start when I moved out from home were not up to that and the
price was beyond college student means. For years though it's been
in the back of my mind as a 'wanna try that'.
About 3 weeks ago in the cooking echo, I saw a lovely recipe and
mentioned that Duck is pretty hard to find here but I kept it in
mind. A week later, one of the rare times when they have Duck at the
commisary occured and I got one. It's a touch over 7 lbs. It sat in
the freezer while we contemplated recipes. My initial intentions
were to put it in the rotisserie with a dry rub but it turned out to
not fit my unit, being about 3 inches too long.
Next I went to plan 'B' which was to line my biggest baking pan with
opened cans as I didnt have a rack to raise it out of the grease with
here and Duck I was told is a very greasy meat. I was all setup to
do it that way when Don went to the exchange and got me a mother's
day gift of a real covered unit (pyrex bottom, metal lifting rack,
metal lid) that just perfectly fit the duck. Yippiee!
After perusing many recipes, we settled on a simple adaption. I
normally try a new food the first time, in a simpler cooking style.
Having not even tasted restraunt Duck in 10 years, I had little
memory so was going on other's experience and what they used. I
decided pre-steaming was probably a good idea but a bit too much for
a first time duck experiment.
Using ideas from many other recipes, we settled on a simple way using
things I have here and didnt have to go out shopping for. The Datu
Puti brand soy sauce is considerably lower-sodium than Kikkoman Lite
and tastes much better. In fact, all their line of sauces are lower
sodium but none are marked 'low sodium'. I've found all of them to
be excellent. I also find all the Jufran brand products to be lower
sodium and extremely tastey, so the 'hot-sweet' sauce here was Jufran
brand as well.
Mix the 3 sauces in a plastic bowl and let sit while washing the duck
out. I set the duck in a suspended strainer that has adjustable sides
and sits at the top of the sink. It seemed 'drying the duck' was
used in almost every recipe so I let it dry for 1 hour.
Once ready, I heated the oven to 425F then slathered the sauce on all
sides and cooked it with the lid on the roaster, for 30 mins 'breast
up'. I cut the onion in 1/2 and stuffed the cavity with that.
I then reduced the heat to 375F and flipped it over, re-saucing it
well on all sides then baking another 30 mins. I raised the temp to
425F and did another 20 mins 'breast up' and re-sauced. At the end,
we took the lid off the roaster, and re-sauced the top (breast) and
let it 'crisp' another 15-20 mins.
The sugars in the sauces made for a lovely dark flavorful skin that
was somewhat crispy at the topside. We let it sit on the top of the
stove to 'set' for about 15 mins then started picking off favored
parts.
Perfection for a family where we all love dark meat and white
meat gets used mostly in chicken salad. I said 'feeds 6' above as an
estimate but we don't eat that much meat so for us, it would be more
like 10 servings. There's plenty of drippings and fat rendered out
which is currently smothering the leftovers in a sort of 'confit'
type of arrangement. There's a perfect duck carcass in the freezer
awaiting being made into duck soup.
The giblets went into a pot of water with just chinese 5 spice added
and the broth has Don in rapures.
We served it with sticky rice and green beans. The onion got all
eaten up as a side nosh.
