How To Cook Duck

Hi, I'm going to show you how to cook duck or specifically how to cook a duck breast. The first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to get my pan ready, so I'm going to get it on the heat. I'm just going to rub a little bit of duck fat into both sides of the fillet.

That's just the duck breast that you can buy from any good supermarket. You don't need to use duck fat, you can actually use butter or vegetable oil or anything else you fancy. I just happen to have some knocking around.

Little bit of seasoning, so just a little bit of salt and pepper there. You could be fancy if you like, and add a bit of orange zest, anything else you like, some chopped herbs, but I'm just going to keep it nice and simple. Now, over here, give my hands a quick wipe.

Over here, the pan is on the hob. Right, that's something I'm doing, something else, so we'll just take that off, I'm just going to add a little bit of butter to the pan and some olive oil. It's always good to add olive oil and butter because it stops the butter from burning.

I'm just going to just move that around the pan and take it off the heat. I don't want it too hot, lay the fillet down. Always lay it away from you, so if there is a splash back, it goes on the other side.

And what I'm going to do is just keep that sizzling away for about another 30 seconds. You'll note that I've got a stainless steel handle on the pan because what I'm going to do is just get a bit of color on both sides of the fillet and then I'm going to finish it off in the oven, about 180 degrees. If you've got a fan-assisted oven, then maybe go down 10 degrees to I don't know, something like 170 degrees.

So, here we go. I'm just putting on a nice bit of color on there but I will cook it skin side-up so that the fat in the skin drips through the flesh of the breast and just permeates as much flavor as possible. Here we go.

Now, what we can do, nice classic technique is just place the breast in all those lovely sauces. Shove it in the oven, like I said, about 170 degrees because this oven is very quick, as regular viewers will know. We'll come back in about 10 minutes' time, something like that.

What we'll then do is we'll let it rest for about 3 or 4 minutes and then we'll plate up, and the key thing when you cook any meat in an oven is the amount of time you spend cooking outside of the oven because when it comes out of the oven, it's cooked all the way through. It's going to be something like 70 degrees in the middle, possibly even a bit hotter. So, you take it out of the oven, it carries on cooking.

What also happens is when you put meat in the oven, it tightens up so you just want to let it relax, let all those juices and flavors circulate round the fillet. It's lovely and juicy and moist, and all the flavor is kept inside the fillet. Anyway, we will be back in 10 minutes to finish off that job.

Well, it's been about 10 minutes, let's have a quick look, see what's happening in here. Ah, here we go. Here's our duck breast, beautifully cooked.

Now, what's going to happen is we need to let it rest as, you know, so we're going to leave it for about 2 or 3 minutes before plating it up but we're pretty much there. Right, well, that was left to rest for about 3 or 4 minutes as I discussed earlier on. I've just got some kale which I cooked earlier.

So we're just going to lay it on top of that. There you have your roast duck. And for my money, the best way of cooking duck. .