Although I've enjoyed duck in a myriad of ways, I've never actually cooked any myself. Today I took a shot and roasted an entire duck, and used made a personal goal of using as much of the bird as I could.
One whole bird.
First step, like any time you'd cook whole poultry, take a moment to see what goodies you have inside. Now, I've been guilty in the past of discarding all of these little treasures when cooking poultry, but I'm determined to use it all. Found inside today's duck: neck and liver. Set aside. In addition, you can remove the large flaps of extra skin on the bird to retain and draw more fat out of later.
Rinse the bird inside and out. Pat skin completely dry. I've seen someone post that they've actually used a hair dryer to dry the skin perfectly. The more dry the skin, the crispier your skin will be. I patted dry with paper towels. The skin is crispy, but I have to admit I'm curious about how much drier (read: crispier) I can get it. Season the cavity of the bird with salt.
Time for the roasting pan. The key here is making sure your duck is off the bottom of the pan, on something which will allow the grease to drip off. In my case, I pulled out our broiling pan and roasted the duck (uncovered) on that. Duck is a fatty bird. Specifically, if you take a look, you'll see a rather thick later of fat directly under the skin. Our goal when roasting the duck is to get as much of that fat rendered down as possible. The outcome is a delicious and decadent fat you can use in cooking later on. I have my sights set on duck fat roasted potatoes....
To help the fat get out, and the skin crisp up, I used two methods. First, score the skin before roasting. I scored a diamond pattern all over the breast side of the bird. The idea is to cut through the skin and a bit of fat, but not the flesh. I'll admit I went a bit deep a few times, but it was quite easy when I got the hang of it. The second method will be poking through the flesh and fat of the bird throughout it's cooking time, to release the grease building up under the skin.
Time to roast the bird. It's dried and scored. Season with a little salt, place breast side up and stick it in the oven. 300F
The technique I used was to roast it an hour, prick the skin to let grease escape, flip it and repeat. In hindsight, I'd only have it on it's breast for one hour near the beginning, some of the skin ended off coming off on the broiling pan. Disappointing, but I saved most of it. However, no pictures of perfectly roasted duck for you this time.
When the bird is pretty close to being done, the fat is mostly rendered and the meat is cooked, turn the oven up to 400F for 5 - 10 minutes. If you choose to glaze the bird, you'll want to remove all of the fat from the bottom of your pan so it doesn't get glaze in it, then glaze the duck and return to the oven for another 5 - 7 minutes at the same temperature.
Eat. Delicious. Crispy. Must do this again.
Afterwards I was left with the bones of the duck, the neck and liver. The neck and bones I immediately put into a pot and started to make stock out of it. It's simmering now, and smells fantastic. I took the extra pieces of skin and cooked them in a saucepan with a little water in it. Slowly I was able to render out quite a bit more fat from those pieces.
Duck liver. I'm not a huge fan of liver, but I thought I'd give cooking it a shot. I used the oil made from the pices of skin at the end, let it brown just a little bit, then tossed in a handful of finely chopped onion. Cooked the onion in the fat until they were soft, then added the duck liver (cut into smaller pieces) and minced garlic. When its all cooked, I seasoned and pureed it. Should be great on crackers.
So that's it. How I used an entire duck today, and now it's dinner time!!
