How To Cook A Duck

I'm going to show you my way, how to cook a duck. It's very, very simple. I'm going to break it down into two pieces.

I've got my leg, I've got my breast. So, very quickly, I've got half a duck. So, I'm just going to break it down, take it away from the breast.

I've got a knuckle there, I'm going to break it away, very, very similar to chicken. So, when you cut into the breast of a chicken or a duck, it's very, very similar. So, I'm cutting that away there.

So, what I'm going to do with this leg is I'm going to break the knuckle and I'm going to comfy it down. Comfy - it means to slow braise and I'm going to braise it down in some goose fat for about four to five hours. And I'm just going to break off that knuckle there.

Take it off. Just take off the excess fat there. It's very, very fatty, just take it off there.

It's got all the fat gone so that's already done there. I'm going to comfy it down like I said, in goose fat, completely immersed in a real slow oven, a hundred centigrade in a nice sort of moderately warm oven, like I said, for about four to five hours, and I'm going to take it out and there we've got perfectly cooked duck leg. So, like I said, with the breast, it takes literally seconds to cook.

So, I'm just going to take off the breast from the carcass, take it away here. So, while we do this in a nice hot pan, just sear it off, in a nice hot pan. But, with a duck leg, it just takes a lot longer to cook because the legs do all the work, the breast is not doing any of the work.

The leg, the more the work it's doing, the more it needs cooking. So, we're going to take off that leg there. There we have the nice little breast there.

So, we've got a nice, probably about eight ounces breast of duck, and so there, if you want to cut it down, so there's what you can do. So, I'm going to get a nice hot pan straight on there. It must be of olive oil.

Why don't we do it in a nice hot pan? So, I'm ready and what we're going to do is I'm going to get in into the pan and just sear it, caramelize the skin, turn it over, and then salt and pepper in a three hundred and fifty degree oven. Then, I'm going to take it out. It's nice and pink and then rest it for about ten to fifteen minutes.

Just let that meat and the muscles rest, so that you're able to carve it just letting it bleed a bit. Have a nice hot pan, really nice. You'll have a bit of salt and pepper, like I said, get that on there.

So, just caramelize that meat. We're looking to cook that breast meat nice and pink, we're not looking to overcook it. I want to retain as much moisture and as much flavor as possible, so it's very important.

So, that's what we are sealing our meat for. So, with any meat in any pan, get the color in there, get it nice and caramelized. You will want to seal all the flavors and you want it to look nice as well.

So, you want to just sear it off, and, I'm only cooking it in oil, you will not cook it in butter, pure, pure vegetable oil which gives it a nice flavor. If you're not too sure about using olive oil, always use the sunflower oil and the olive oil, and do a mix. It will caramelize quite nicely.

Now, so I've got my color on my duck and now, I'll go for the oven, maybe for about fifteen or twenty minutes. These are quite big breasts, and then I'll take it out a few seconds. I'll take that out and then I'll rest it, let it relax.

Then I'll cut it up and have it ready to serve. And that's how I cook my duck. .