I decided to make a duck this year as well as the turkey. I’d made this recipe a couple times and holy cow it’s good, so I thought I’d make it for Jamie’s mom, who had never had duck.
The thing about cooking a duck is that if you do it right you’ve got a lot of duck fat left over. Duck fat is deliciousness defined, so I put a little into the potatoes and a lot into the gravy. Result: a dinner everybody raved over – it was my best ever.
So from now on whenever I make a big elaborate dinner, I’m always going to make a duck so I’ll have the fat available to delicify all the other dishes.
i haven’t had duck yet. i heard it was greasy, so i just assumed bad-greasy. is duck expensive comapred to a small turkey?
Hmmm…per-pound duck is probably more expensive. But ducks aren’t very big, so you’ll probably end up spending less overall.
Ducks are loaded with fat. Tons of it. They have to have it to keep their little derrières out of the water. Which means that if you try to roast one you’ll probably end up with very greasy meat. So you don’t do that. The recipe I linked to starts with a 45 minute steam in a steamer basket; this allows almost all the fat to melt away into the water. Then you pan-sear the duck on a cast iron skillet to crispen the skin and serve it. The meat isn’t greasy (well, at least not any greasier than fried chicken) and the crispy skin is fantastic.
And then you’ve got a bunch of liberated duck fat that you can saute potatoes in, add to gravy, etc, etc.