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How would you cook duck for Christmas?

Shrug

13:43 / 19.12.06

Hi, my name is Cat Exact. I'm preparing duck for Christmas. I fear food poisoning. Defrosting time/per kg? Should I wash the duck?

I know that I should puncture the duck a couple of times as water-fowl are generally more fatty than a turkey, that I should perhaps raise it on a grill or forks in the oven, and I'll probably make an orange and cranberry sauce but apart from that: Any general cooking tips for the culinarily impaired?

doozy floop

16:37 / 19.12.06

Hello Cat, I too am doing the duck thing for xmas with absolutely no experience therof. I asked much vaguer questions than yours in the foody thread thus, and got a good-looking recipe. Fear not food poisoning though, because it's all good for your immune system. That's what I tell myself.

(I tell my guests too, only really really quietly so they maybe don't quite hear.)

So, I'm going to loosely follow the recipe with intentions of adding the usual fine xmas trimmings, but I'm going to see how it all pans out.

We have hearty stocks of cheese and crackers available, should it all go wrong. It's all about the fun, after all. Everyone eating my duck has to agree with this or I smack them about the head with a month-old mince pie before stealing all their presents and burning my santa hat.

Triplets

17:06 / 19.12.06

Ah, Burning San 2006.

Mistoffelees

18:22 / 19.12.06

Is anybody eating a turducken?

Turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The name is a portmanteau of those ingredients, turkey, duck, and chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. Some recipes call for the turkey to be stuffed with a chicken which is then stuffed with a duckling. It is also called a chucky.

18:57 / 19.12.06

I recently helped a friend make a duck aux cerises recipe from one of Alice Waters' cookbooks. I recall it thusly— get the organs and extra fat off; reserve for a duck soup sometime in the future. Halve and pit about a pound of cherries; stir into a red cooking wine in a nonreactive dish. Rub the duck with salt and pepper. Cook on a rack over a pan at (I think) 375ºF until done (ducks with thermometers stuck in them can be had very easily where I come from), turning and basting with the cherry glaze every ten minutes. Make sure you don't use anything aluminum.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:20 / 19.12.06

I would love to try a turducken just to say: "My God, have you ever tried a turducken?"

Twice

19:29 / 19.12.06

Turducken, as a creature, sounds very unappetising. I think the BIRD/bird/bd combos are better suited to summer eating, and chilled.

With duckies in general, remember that (especially at Christmas) they don't go much further than 2 persons per bird.

Cherry with duck is ace, and (I think) nicer than other, citrusy, fruit. It's good to have some sharp, though, to cut through the grease.

Duck is a bastard to carve. If you roast it whole, you need to be happy that the breasts need to be cooked through, or the rest will be intollerable. Alternatively, you could remove the breasts and cook them pink on the day, and confit the rest of the bird. This way you get melting tender joints and yummy juicy breasts. Sauce of choice can be made in advance.

Ganesh

19:38 / 19.12.06

"Turducken" sounds like some sort of Germanic duck-stuffed-with-faeces affair. Not nice.

Char Aina

19:43 / 19.12.06

it tastes better than you might imagine.

Triplets

05:13 / 20.12.06

Turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken.

The world's first poultry-based Tardis.

Triplets

05:13 / 20.12.06

(Turkey and relative duck in sauce

I'll get me coat.)

Spaniel

10:49 / 20.12.06

I can't help thinking that all those stuff a roc with an ostrich recipes must produce sandpaper dry meat.

Hydra vs Leviathan

11:55 / 20.12.06

I've heard of one from somewhere in Central Asia which was basically "stuff a camel with a sheep, which has been stuffed with fish, which have been stuffed with boiled eggs"...

Goose is better than duck for a roast, so they say (and is actually traditional for British Xmas, from before it was usurped by the distinctly USian turkey - hence all those rhymes about "the goose is getting fat" etc). It's also, by definition, free range, as gesse won't eat when kept in battery conditions, so have to be kept in largish fields to let them eat grass.

Then again, i'm vegetarian for most of the year, tho i don't really get the choice to say no to a piece of dead bird (usually chicken, now it's on a smaller scale than it was when i was a kid and my grandmother was alive) with my family for Xmas...

Evil Scientist

12:01 / 20.12.06

I can't help thinking that all those stuff a roc with an ostrich recipes must produce sandpaper dry meat.

Though putting the duck in the middle of the threesome might solve that problem.

...

A sentance I never thought I'd write.

Again.

17:17 / 20.12.06

nat, where does pate de foie gras come from then?

diz

20:16 / 20.12.06

I would love to try a turducken just to say: "My God, have you ever tried a turducken?"

I will probably regret for the rest of my life that I spent Christmas 2005 in Louisiana, the epicenter of turducken culture, and did not have turducken. I could have looked harder. I should have. However, supposedly the turducken movement is spreading. I may yet have another chance.

I suppose it says something about my feelings on the turducken issue was that my immediate response to seeing the question "How would you cook duck for Christmas?" was "Stuffed inside a turkey, with a chicken stuffed inside, of course."

Supposedly, putting the duck in the middle, between the turkey and the chicken, allows the richer and more gamy flavors of the duck to permeate the turkey and the chicken. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

Shrug

14:08 / 22.12.06

Thanks doozy. I think we might go with that one, I may just avoid TEH FEERED food poisoning for once!

Turducken

grant

16:37 / 22.12.06

Deep fry it.

you know you really want to.

Hydra vs Leviathan

20:14 / 22.12.06

nat, where does pate de foie gras come from then?

Geese which have been force-fed, which, IIRC, is now illegal in the EU.

The force-feeding is necessary because if a goose is kept in enclosed conditions, it will refuse to eat. The reason it's so expensive is mostly because this is so uneconomical (and also possibly because historically European royalty/aristocracy associated cruelty with delicacy).

It would be utterly, ludicrously uneconomical to force-feed a goose that was not to be used to provide a ridiculously highly priced delicacy, so a goose sold at normal roasting-bird prices won't be force-fed, and a goose is either free-range or force-fed...

00:20 / 23.12.06

Ah. Good to know.

Olulabelle

07:28 / 23.12.06

Id, the birds (it's not just geese, it's also ducks) are very cruelly force fed, using a funnel. They are fed too much food in hideous ways and it's all vile and should be avoided. There are all sorts of campaigns to stop it.

There's more info at the bottom of the wikipedia page on foie gras if you want it.

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