Duck, baked in one way or another, is present in the national cuisines of many peoples. And everywhere it is considered a festive dish. Indeed, unlike chicken, the duck has a very rich, memorable taste. This bird is most often cooked in the oven as a whole. And now, when heat-resistant sleeves and foil appeared, traditional recipes were supplemented with new ones.
The most famous way to cook duck, which has received worldwide fame, is in Peking. The sides of the bird are greased with honey, and when baked, a surprisingly tasty caramelized crust is obtained. Another duck is often stuffed. Her meat is ideally combined with sour filling: apples, cabbage, quince, cranberries. But also the duck is stuffed with porridge, mushrooms and sweet fruits (oranges and tangerines). Another bird, although less frequently, is stewed and fried. In this article you will find a selection of recipes for duck baked in the oven, either whole or in pieces, with a side dish, with minced meat or as an independent dish.
How to choose a carcass
In this bird, meat grows coarser and sinewy with age. And if you buy an old carcass, no matter how hard you try, whatever the recipe you use, the result will be disastrous. Therefore, before considering how to bake a duck, let's figure out the right bird. Carcasses sold in supermarkets are young. But on poultry farms, ducks are fed with antibiotics and other growth stimulants. Such meat is not much different from chicken. For a good duck, head to the market. But be on guard there so that you don’t get a bird that has died of old age.
First of all, feel the “bust” of the duck. In young individuals it is soft, the sternum can be slightly bent, while in older ones it is like a shell. Now let's pay attention to the paws of the bird. The young fingers look straight, and they are soft, with pale membranes. Old birds have coarsened feet. And their fingers are fan-shaped from the heel. The fat under the skin of a good duck should not be yellow-greenish, but white. The skin of such a carcass is white, smooth, slightly shiny. In the context, the meat of the “correct” duck is red, saturated in color. Needless to say, that the smell exudes fresh, and the carcass should not be slimy?
Product Preparation
Whatever baked duck recipe you choose, you need to start cooking with a preliminary cut of the carcass. It should be washed under running water, dried. If feathers are available, they must be removed. You also need to pull out all the insides. The duck tail has iron, which exudes a not very pleasant smell. And it is also enhanced by heat treatment. Therefore, in ducks, the tail is cut out.
In order for hard meat to bake well and get rid of a specific smell, it is pickled. There are many recipes for mixtures in which you should hold the carcass before cooking. The most common is vinegar with spices. They also use wine, lemon juice. The meat of the pickled duck is not only softer, it is saturated with the smell of seasonings. If you intend to bake the whole bird, it should cut off the extreme joint from the wings. You also need to cut off the skin and excess fat in the area of the tail and neck.
Whole duck
Naturally, meat cut into pieces is baked faster. Such a dish is more reliable, and you will be safe from an unpleasant surprise when you find raw flesh deep in the carcass. However, the whole carcass looks like a festive dish, and cutting it in front of the guests is a whole ritual. And to cut it in the finished form is much easier than in raw. Therefore, many housewives are interested in the question of how to bake the whole duck.
In this business you need to know a few tricks. Firstly, to get soft, bone-falling meat, you need to lightly boil the duck, literally 20-30 minutes, until half ready. The resulting broth is not poured, but water the carcass in the process of baking. Before sending the duck into the oven, it must be marinated for several hours, or even better - half a day. There are several ways to bake a bird: on a baking sheet with high sides, in a ceramic cauldron or cast-iron gooseneck, in foil or sleeve. Therefore, the heat treatment time is different. The foil needs to be removed and the sleeve cut twenty minutes before the end of cooking so that the duck has time to brown. Now consider the individual recipes.
Duck slices
This method will significantly save time, since previously cut meat is pickled and cooked faster. At the same time, we can buy not a carcass, but some of its separate parts - legs, breasts or thighs. This will save you the need to cut and gut the bird. Sliced duck is also pickled. But first they wash it, and dry the skin with paper towels.
Here's the easiest recipe for pickling duck meat. Mix salt with ground black pepper, add two tablespoons of honey, stir. With this mass, carefully rub the pieces. Put them in a baking dish. This can be a baking sheet with high sides, a bowl of heat-resistant glass, a cast-iron or ceramic cauldron. Squeeze juice from one orange onto a duck. Two other citrus fruits, without peeling, cut into thick circles and lay on top of the slices. There we put three branches of fresh rosemary. Tighten the top of the dishes with cling film and put in the refrigerator for three to four hours. When the duck is pickled, preheat the oven to 200 degrees. We remove the cling film and put a piece of foil in its place. Bake for 50 minutes. Then we remove the foil, water the pieces with the allocated juice and cook for another quarter of an hour. Instead of citrus, prunes are perfect.
Stuffed Duck Basic Recipe
Of course, you can bake a whole carcass without anything. But the ingredients of the filling make the baked duck juicy and soak it with its aromas. To show the very principle of cooking stuffed poultry, we use the classic recipe. In it, for filling, three large apples of sour varieties and four sweet plums are taken. If you don’t have the last fruits, then you can replace them with oranges, tangerines, quinces. Prunes will do. First, pour the prepared carcass with boiling water. This is necessary so that the skin on it does not burst during baking. We dry the duck with paper towels. Mix a tablespoon of spices for poultry and salt. Rub all these carcasses inside and out. Leave for half an hour.
In the meantime, let's take care of the fruits. We will take out the seeds at the drain, at the apples we will cut out the core and cut into slices. Stuff the fruits with the inside of the duck. To prevent the filling from falling out, we fasten the edges of the peritoneum with skewers or sewn with a harsh thread. Now you need to tie the wings and legs behind the duck so that they do not burn when baking. We cover the baking sheet with parchment. We lay the duck upside down. Bake for 40 minutes at 180 degrees. Then we turn over the carcass, pour over the allocated juice. Reduce the heat in the oven a little, to 170 degrees. We bake another three quarters of an hour. We make icing by mixing honey in equal proportions with soy sauce. With this mass, with the help of a silicone brush, we coat the entire duck. We are sent to rest until readiness, which is checked by a puncture in the thickest part of the carcass. If the nectar has not come out, and amber juice has appeared, then the baked duck with apples and plums is ready. Towards the end of the cooking process, you can put a side dish on the baking sheet next to the bird - potatoes, green beans, cauliflower. Vegetables will impart an additional aroma to the meat and soak it with juice.
Peking duck: preparation
It is absolutely impossible to ignore this most famous dish of Chinese cuisine. Here we give a recipe adapted to Slavic realities - it is unlikely that you have a special blower that separates the skin from the meat. But if you find a Peking duck, the dish will come out more authentic. This bird has thinner skin and less fat. We prepare a two-kilogram carcass: by gutting, cutting off the extreme phalanges of the wings, tail and skin from the neck, pouring duck over boiling water, and drying with a towel.
Cooking marinade. To do this, mix in a saucepan 3-4 cm ginger root, cut into small pieces, two tablespoons of honey, 3-4 star anise, a pinch of cinnamon, fennel seeds, hot red pepper, cloves. Pour one and a half liters of water and a quarter cup of rice vinegar. We put the saucepan on the fire and cook after boiling for five minutes. We infuse the duck on all sides with this mixture. Rub her skin with salt to taste, ground garlic and ginger (five cloves and one teaspoon). Peking baked duck must be pickled in a cold place for at least 12 hours. The carcass needs to be planted on a jar, and it, in turn, should be placed in a deep container, since the bird will empty the juice.
Peking Duck: Roasting
The next day we start cooking. Let the carcass lie down for an hour at room temperature. We shift to a baking sheet with high sides. Cover with a sheet of foil. Bake at 200 degrees for about an hour. Mix sesame oil with soy sauce in a 2: 3 ratio. We take out the baking sheet and grease the duck with this solution. We throw out the foil. We return the bird back to the oven, increasing the fire to 230 degrees. So bake for about ten minutes. We get it again. By this time, we should have liquid honey on hand. If it is candied (hard), heat it in a water bath. Carefully grease the carcass with honey. After that, the baked duck in the oven should stand for another five minutes. Then you can serve it to the table.
Baked duck in a sleeve
Such a simple device, like a non-consumable bag, allows you to cook a juicy bird, and even at the same time as a side dish. The sleeve will protect the meat from drying out and relieve the cook of the need to constantly water the carcass of the allocated juice. The cooking process is not very different from the standard - on a baking sheet in the oven. Baked duck with potatoes will be a wonderful and satisfying dish for a family celebration.
Rub the carcass with salt and spread with honey. Leave to marinate like that. We clean five potatoes. We cut as many apples of sour varieties into thick slices, removing the cores. Sprinkle vegetables and fruits with a pinch of cinnamon, chili pepper, salt, cardamom and star anise. Mix. We start with the minced duck’s belly part. Sew the ends of the peritoneum or fasten them with skewers. We lay the bird in the sleeve along with the remaining potatoes and apples. Pour half a glass of cream. Tie a bag and place it on a baking sheet. Cooking an hour and a half at 200 degrees. We cut the sleeve (carefully, hot steam!) And return to the oven until a fried crust is obtained.
Duck baked in foil
A thin sheet of aluminum also prevents the meat from drying out in the oven. It inhibits the evaporation of juice. The foil, however, does not allow the skin of the duck to brown. Therefore, the sheet must be deployed twenty minutes before the end of the heat treatment. The foil is also valuable in that we can cook baked duck with potatoes or another side dish in it. Vegetables are literally stewed in the stand out meat juice. Before wrapping in foil, the carcass of the bird should be marinated, and also grated with salt and a mixture of vegetable oil, crushed garlic and honey. In a metal bag, such a duck bakes for about an hour. Stuffed poultry can also be cooked in foil.
Duck in beer
To cook this dish, you need a cast-iron gooseneck. We prepare the carcass, rub it with salt, pepper, and other spices for the bird. Six apples are mine. Three of them are cut into quarters and laid on the bottom of the caterpillar with the back down. We clean the remaining apples with three large chips. We pack this mass inside the duck abdomen. The carcass itself is laid on apples. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of caraway seeds, put three cloves and a dozen peas of allspice. Pour half a liter of light beer. Lower the lid of the goose and put it in the oven. Cook at 200 degrees for at least an hour. Then remove the lid and continue to bake for another thirty minutes. It should be noted that lower apples, cut into quarters, are not served. They are used only for aroma and as a buffer between the bottom of the goose and the skin of the bird. Boiled potatoes are recommended for serving.
Duck in the dough
Bread shell not only makes the dish more satisfying, but also protects it from drying better than any foil. The duck baked in the dough looks original, and its meat comes out tender and juicy. Traditionally, we start work with the preparation of marinade. Mix in a bowl three cloves of finely chopped garlic, a shabby centimeter slice of ginger, lemon or lime juice, two teaspoons of Dijon mustard and one teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of salt, red and black pepper. With this mass we rub the duck inside and out. We send marinated.
When we are going to bake the duck, prepare the dough. To do this, sift two and a half cups of flour, mix with a teaspoon of cookie powder. Pour 250 milliliters of kefir into another container. Beat one egg and mix thoroughly. We start adding portioned flour with baking powder until the elastic dough is kneaded. We let it settle for a quarter of an hour, and then roll it into a thin layer. In the middle of the circle we spread the carcass. Raise the edges of the reservoir and "swaddle" the duck. We cover the baking sheet with parchment. We lay out the bundle so that the edges of the dough are at the bottom. Grease the surface with yolk. Bake for at least an hour at a temperature of 160 degrees. The dough should have become rosy by then.