After the successful preparation and cooking of the Thanksgiving turkey, I decided to try my hand with duck for this past Christmas dinner.
What are the good qualities of a well-roasted duck?
- Thoroughly cooked
- Crispy skin, glistening with fat and crackling
- Fall off the bone quality
So I looked it up, and found two sites:
The Hungry Mouse: Steps on how to create the perfect crispy skin
All Recipes: A user describes her ingredients for the a version of the famed Peking duck
One thing I must warn though, is that you leave yourself enough time to cook the duck, preferably 5-6 hours. I’ll explain why in a bit.
Gather up all the ingredients and make sure you leave a space of time of a few hours to let the duck marinate in this. Overnight is even better.
Put it in the oven for four hours and…
Voila! A tasty unique version on Peking duck!
Here’s the thing though…that wonderful picture you see of the duck is only after two hours in the oven. And by that time it was around 8pm and everyone was getting hungry waiting for the main course.
I figured, four hours? Heck, two hours is enough to fully cook that tiny 7 lb. duck.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. It bled all over the plate as soon as I made the first cut and ended up having to stick it in the oven again for another hour (and even then it was still a bit pink). We then decided to just eat the duck tomorrow and eat dinner since everyone seemed a bit emaciated.
So lesson learned…PLAN ACCORDINGLY.
