So where did I start? The internet? No! with a Laura Calder cook book and a Tweet out to her. As luck would have it, she was online and responded within minutes!!!
After some sound advise from my cooking idol, I decided against cooking the duck whole and took up the challenge of cooking the parts separately. In the end, the duck meat turned out really good and I was happy with my purchase and the decision to cook the parts as individuals.
In the top photo I show the duck with my zucchini boats and roasted veggies. See links for cooking those items. This post will only cover the duck. I chose to do the legs and wings first because they take a lot longer to cook than the breast meat does.
Ingredients:
1 - Frozen whole duck (defrosted)
1/2 - Cup red wine
Olive Oil
Salt + Pepper
Directions (Legs):
Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees.
Cut the legs and wings off, then put them into an oven friendly dish.
(It was harder to cut the parts off then I thought it would be!)
Fill the bottom with 1/2 inch of olive oil, sprinkle the duck with salt and pepper, then cover with tin foil and bake for 2 hours. After 2 hours, remove the tin foil, increase the temperature to 400 degrees and cook for 15 more minutes to crisp the top.
Remove from the oven and serve! I wasn't very creative with this one being my first attempt at duck and I really wanted to see what the legs and wings would taste like on their own without any other influences. They were okay but not amazing.
(I said chicken once when I meant to say duck)
(The duck meat was great to have in my lunch with some left over potatoes)
Directions (Breast):
After cutting off the legs and wings for the previous recipe, you should have pretty good access to get to the breast meat on the duck. Cut off as much of the duck meat as you can but be sure to keep all the fat on it. Duck fat is amazing for cooking!
At this point you can start cooking or you can open a bottle of wine, pour some into with the duck to marinate and have a glass or two before starting to cook :)
Heat up a large frying pan to medium-high heat and add the duck fat side down. We put fat side down as it will melt away like butter.
After it has been sizzling for a little bit, flip it over.
Cook for a little bit more, and you are done! I don't have any timing for you on this one because I really don't remember. I ended up having to cut into one once I was at a point went I felt like it was ready.
Remove the duck from the pan and let rest. While resting, you can deglaze the pan and make a red wine reduction sauce.
While the sauce is settling, you can cut into the duck and check out all the goodness!
Duck is a gammy meat so you should see a little bit of pink in it.
Plate the duck with your starch and veggies. Spoon your sauce reduction over the duck (my reduction didn't turn out as nicely as I would hope) and you are ready to serve!
