barbary duck – Duckduckbro

Cooking them Old Ducks

This is duck breast – cooked in its own fat ala duck confit – then seared in a non-stick pan to crisp the skin. Instead of a soggy, bland stew, duck confit is – in my opinion – the best way to cook a duck more than 6 months old. At this age, the meat of the duck begins to toughen. By cooking in its own fat is it possible to realise superb tenderness and taste. Below I describe how I prepared this way of cooking duck.

duckbreasttonight2 — Half of the duck breast served with rice and the Bohol-anon ‘law-uy’, simple foraged vegetable greens.

For this batch, I use 3 large adult ducks, age 6 months to over 1 year. You must select duck that is very fat to produce the appropriate amount of fat. The dressed weight of the duck is 1.7 to 2.5kg. Better if you can get bigger than 2 kg.
The duck is washed and cleaned. I rub the skin of the duck with salt to clean it thoroughly. Then I cut the duck into large pieces: wings, breasts, legs, backbone, neck. I cut at the joints and never break any bones.
The fat and skin of the duck is removed and set aside as these will be used to render duck fat. However, DO NOT remove the skin on the breasts and legs. The skin on these portions of duck must be kept on to keep the meat moist, flavourful and to produce the crisp skin that is most sought after in duck dishes.
The duck pieces are salted and rubbed with herbs and spices. I used thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, pepper. For each kilo of duck, I used only 1 tsp of salt. I did not use a lot of salt because this dish is not a way to preserve the duck for extended period of time. If your purpose is to preserve the duck, then you must follow the French way of making duck confit.
I placed the duck pieces in a sealed plastic container and kept it in the fridge for 30 minutes to 1 hour. You can marinate longer if you wish, for example, overnight.
A good stainless steel or cast iron pot may be used, large enough to put all the duck inside. Begin by placing the pieces of duck skin and fat in the pot first. Next, place the duck wings, neck, and backbone. These are pieces of duck that has fat and skin and will be rendered. Keep the breasts and legs for later cooking. In the pot pour a cup of water.
Start to render the duck fat by heating at medium high. Keep the pot covered at all times. When the water starts to boil, lower the heat to keep simmering. Keep the pot covered at all times. In my experience, the fat is fully rendered in 15 to 30 minutes! It is fast if you have a good fat duck and good pot.
Transfer all the duck fat to another pot where you will cook the duck breasts and legs. I had enough duck fat to cover all the legs and breasts of 3 ducks. Place the duck breasts and legs into the oil. Place one head of crushed garlic in the pot.
Cover the pot and cook over medium high heat until he oil boils. When the oil boils, lower the heat to maintain simmering. Simmer for 1 hour and turn off the heat and let sit – DO NOT OPEN THE LID OF THE POT – for another hour. The duck will continue cooking.
Open the pot and inspect the duck meat.Use a fork to check if it is tender enough. Otherwise, simmer again in oil.
The duck may be kept this way in oil in the pot and reheated everyday to keep from spoiling. The duck should keep well for several days but no more than 1 week.
To prepare the duck, all I do is scoop out some duck fat into a non-stick pan. Then I place the duck breast/legs with the skin down and cook until the skin is brown and crisp. Place the duck breast/legs on a plate and garnish with vegetables or serve with stew.

The result is absolutely tender, absolutely delicious duck. It is not necessary to have young fattened duck for this way of cooking duck. Try it. Bon appétit!

Duck Burgers

A few days ago, I got some ground beef and ground pork from the supermarket. I wanted to make some burger patties. They are great served with salad vegetables. Here, the burger patties are served with lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, onions and grilled red bell peppers.

The spices and seasonings added to making these patties are:

Flour or oatmeal or bread
Egg, salt, pepper and sugar
Curry powder blend (yellow)
Fresh milk or cream
Dijon mustard
Soy sauce
Minced onion
DIY Nutritional Yeast (instead of MSG)
Phosphate dissolved in water and a bit of salt

Mix with 500 grams of ground pork and 500 grams of ground beef.

Sugar and phosphate should be kept at a minimum (1/2 tsp). You can opt not to use phosphate which may result in a drier meat burger. If you do use phosphate, remember that maximum usage levels in meat products are 0.5% (8 oz per 100 lbs, 500 grams per 100 kg) of your finished products.

Now what is DIY nutritional yeast? “Nutritional Yeast” is available in shops and is often used as an ingredient in cheese-like sauces in vegan dishes. If you cant find it you can make your own. It is simply active dry yeast that was made to rise then cooked until dry in a non-stick pan. The thin crepe-like yeast is then crumbled and kept in a sealed container until use. The taste of “nutritional yeast” is very similar to the unami taste of monosodium glutamate. Therefore it is a great and healthier flavour enhancer.

The result are delicious, tender, juicy burgers! And of course I just had to try making these burgers using duck!

fatsburgers2 — *Pork/Beef Burgers on the left and Duck burgers on the right!*

I took out some duck from the confit pot, took the meat off the bones. To this is added the phosphate dissolved in water and placed in a chopper (or blender/food processor). The processed duck meat will look a bit like pâté. Place the processed duck meat and add the rest of the ingredients. Take a teaspoon of the mixture and fry it and taste. Add necessary ingredients to suit your taste.

Place the mixture in the fridge to firm up, then shape into patties and fry. Keep the rest of the patties in the freezer.

The burgers are fantastic! I love them and I’ll make thicker ones to go wth bread. Although the taste of the two different types of burgers are quite similar because of the same spices used, the textures are different. Duck burgers have a more chewy texture, a bit like using corned beef or pulled pork to make burgers. I am thinking that perhaps it is better to chop the meat with a knife rather than mincing them in a food processor. Next time!

The Versatile Duck

Since butchering 8 ducks two weeks ago, I’ve been able to explore more duck dishes, certainly, finding the best and most convenient way of cooking duck. Since being busy with sow Number 1 and her piglets, I don’t really have the time to prepare and cook complicated duck dishes.

The most convenient way to keep duck is by cooking and preserving it in oil. The French call it “confit.” Here, the duck fat is rendered and this fat is used to cook and preserve the duck. If not enough fat is produced, it is acceptable to use suitable cooking oil.

The process of making duck confit involves salting the duck with salt and a variety of herbs, keeping that overnight or so, then cooking in oil. In my case, not having the leisure of such preparations, I simply cut up the duck and put it in a pot of coconut oil.

A small amount of aromatic herb is placed in the oil — some thyme, star anise and a bit of laurel leaf. A bit of salt and pepper. And that’s it — the pot is heated up every now and then over the next couple of weeks, adding new duck in as the pot is emptied, keeping the oil and adding extra oil if necessary.

The best thing about this method is that you can take out a bit of duck meat and prepare that in any way you wish. Because the duck has been cooked in oil until tender, it doesn’t take much time to whip out a duck dish.

Some of the dishes I’ve prepared are these (see photos). The easiest is to get some duck legs or breast and braise that in oil, tomatoes, salt and pepper, or some kashmir chilies. I have also made duck stew with vegetables which has a brown duck sauce base and some potatoes and carrots. Here, the duck meat can be shreds of meat off the backbone, wings and neck.

One of my favourite experiments is “corned duck.” I love corned beef and I really just had to create that same taste and texture with duck meat. I selected duck breast now truly tender from cooking in oil. This meat is flaked and set aside. Next is chop up some onions which will be browned in oil to caramelise. You can add garlic here if you wish. Next, the shredded duck breast is added together with salt, pepper, a bit of sage, a bit of allspice powder and star anise. The result is absolutely fantastic. Duck meat resembles beef and using shredded duck meat with spices commonly used in corned beef or salted beef preparations produce such a remarkable dish. I love the long shreds of duck meat! I only regret that I didn’t have enough duck fat to add to this!

Other ways of cooking duck I’ve tried are: duck curry, duck noodle soup and duck spring rolls. All coming from a pot of duck confit!

So there — over the last 2 weeks we’ve cooked and consumed 4 ducks and served guests as well. We still have 4 more ducks to go and I don’t get tired of eating duck because it can be prepared in a variety of ways. Bon appétit!

Linggo ng Pato!

OK, yesterday was Duckerday, today it’s Linggo ng Pato! ?

This time, it’s the duck legs, breast, liver, gizzard and heart. I decided to cook the duck legs and breast ala confit. However, I didn’t have enough duck fat to use for the confit, so I got some coconut oil on top of the duck fat.

Cooking duck meat in oil is fantastic because oil heats up really fast, stays hot, and cooks deep into the meat. You actually save more energy than cooking meat in water like stew. Anyway, the only other ingredients I added to the oil were: salt, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, sage, tomatoes, black peppercorns and garlic.

When the duck legs and breast were close to super tender, I added in the heart and gizzard (sliced a bit so they cook easier). The result, is absolutely fantastic! I should add: (1) curing, salting or marinating duck meat is probably unnecessary because duck meat (well maybe at least OUR ducks, ?) is already very flavourful; (2) curing and salting only dries up and meat and makes it tougher so it is not necessary!; (3) those native tomatoes are the BEST tasting tomatoes, they have more flavour than those huge expensive hybrid tomatoes!

And here’s what I did with the liver – I used a bit of the oil and bits of garlic and tomatoes from the confit, then used that to cook the liver, adding water when the pan dries a bit, de-glazing it and bringing out that delicious brown sauce!!!! I served the liver with a bit of chilli and singakamas (jicama) from the garden. This liver is brilliant, absolutely fantastic, smooth like your most expensive foie gras can ever be smooth!

Also, I think this duck liver is much larger than the usual because this duck is part of my experiment on fattening phase for ducks. I will write about that later when I get more results.

In the meantime, I am just so ecstatic with the result of this cooking experiment! I would never find this fantastic quality of duck meat (and cooking of course hahah! ?) anywhere else! Cheers! ?

Duck Weekend: Duck springrolls

Greetings, my ducks! ? It’s a weekend and we had a duck selected for weekend meal and here it is! I recorded a video of my amazing butchering skills but decided not to post it here — at least not for now. ? Maybe later! But you can see in the photos the dressed duck (thanks to the great skills of our lady butcher, Terry), and then me butchering the duck, then the finished product – duck meat, liver and heart on one side and the bones and trims on the other side.

For today, I decided to deal with the bones and trimmings. The cats think that’s a much better idea too! The duck is not very large, a dressed weight of 1.3kg, so it will not render a lot of fat. So I thought that I can probably use the meat for confit later and, for today – the bones, skin, fat and trimmings for spring rolls and broth.

The process is simple: put the bones, fat and trimmings into a pot and heat up, simmer, boil in its own fat and juices, brown it then add water (not too much) and seasonings. My choice of seasoning is salt, pepper and 5-spice powder. Let this cook for a while until the meat is soft and can be easily removed from the bones.

Let this cool for a bit then start separating the meat from the bones (cats are waiting…). Shred the meat up, you may or may not wish to include the skins. Here’s what I got from my bones and trimmings – the bones on one side and the shredded meat on the other side.

Now that the cats are busy eating, I can start cooking. I have prepared some onion, garlic, chopped carrots and cabbage. The rice paper for the spring rolls are ready too. I use these Vietnamese rice paper. When your ingredients are ready and you’re ready to roll, you can prepare the rice paper. You don’t cook this rice paper. You just soften it by putting a damp towel over it until it is soft enough to roll. This type of rice paper is eaten fresh! I love this because sometimes I’m too lazy to fry stuff … ?

Here, I’ve put duck and veggies together and cooked, seasoned, added a bit of the broth, and let it cool down a bit before attempting to start rolling!

And here are my finished duck spring rolls!!! Served with Hoisin sauce! Now these are two ingredients you shouldn’t skip in the preparation of this dish: the 5-Spice powder and the Hoisin Sauce. Those two make such an enormous difference in the taste, flavour of this duck dish.

And here’s the spring rolls served with a salad of home-grown singkamas (jicama). I was surprised how well these went together!!! I think that’s because Vietnamese spring rolls (duck or vermicelli or other) are often served with a dipping of sweet vinegar, and the vinegar dressing in the salad just partnered perfectly with these spring rolls. PLUS the crunch of the singkamas compliments the softness of the rice paper – fantastic!

Bon appétit! ?

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