There’s nothing wrong with a duck popper or duck taco—unless such basic approaches are all you ever do with a wild duck. Just beyond that level of waterfowl cookery lies a vast, wonderful realm of recipes that are next-level good yet easily executed at home. Each of these five recipes features a great kitchen tool and accompanying technique that will enhance your culinary skills and boost your reputation among your friends. It’s time to preheat the oven and stretch your waterfowl chef’s wings.
Duck with Spiced Hoisin Sauce
I cooked wild game with a sous vide for five years before I tried it with duck. Using a sous vide is a snap, and it was a game changer for venison steaks and backstrap. A sous vide is a machine that clamps to the side of a large pot and heats and circulates water. The term is French for “under vacuum,” and it is spot on. Meats are placed in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and cooked at low temperatures for extended periods. The result is meat cooked to a precise temperature all the way through. No more singed outsides and raw insides.
This technique can help solve one of the trickiest problems of cooking wild duck: If you cook a whole bird long enough to tenderize the legs, thighs, and wings, you risk overcooking the breast meat. By separating the breast meat from the rest of the duck parts and adjusting the water bath temperature, all of the duck is cooked perfectly. This sous vide recipe is one I’ve come to rely on, and its savory flavor is hard to beat.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 plucked duck, cut into pieces (2 breast fillets, 2 leg quarters, and 2 wings)
- 2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon minced ginger
- 3 minced garlic cloves
- 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
- 1 tablespoon cranberry juice
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
- 1 diced small sweet onion
- 1/2 cup sliced fennel bulb
PREPARATION
1. Score the skin on the breast fillets using a very sharp knife. Avoid cutting into the meat. Salt all of the duck pieces liberally with 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Refrigerate 6 hours or overnight. Remove and pat dry.
2. Make a marinade by combining all remaining ingredients. Place the breast fillets in one bag and the remaining duck pieces in another bag. Add enough marinade to both bags to fully cover the meat.
3. Set the sous vide machine to 145 degrees. Add the bag with the leg quarters and wings to the water bath and cook for 2 hours. Reduce the sous vide temperature to 135. Add the bag with the breast fillets to the water bath and cook both bags for an additional 3 hours.
4. Remove the bags from the water bath, remove the meat from the bags, pour the juice from the bags into a cast-iron skillet and reduce. While the sauce is reducing, brown and crisp the skin on all duck pieces on a very hot grill.
5. Serve the duck with the thickened sauce.
Duck with Sweet Potatoes, Onions, and Sausage
I’m not the biggest fan of roast duck, but this method—prepared on a sheet pan—will cook practically everything on a duck but the quack. You can even stir the heart and pieces of liver into the mix if you’d like. I adapted this dish from a New York Times recipe that has become a family staple. It’s quick, dirties only a single sheet pan, and is incredibly tasty.
Sheet pans have risen from lowly status to a serious cooking tool of late. They differ from baking sheets and cookie sheets by having a raised rim to keep juices from spilling over the sides. And when the juice is a heavenly mix of duck fat seasoned with apples, onions, sweet potatoes, and sausage, you don’t want to waste a single teaspoon. Look for a sheet pan made of bare aluminum, without any coatings, and avoid aluminized steel, which can create hot spots. And definitely skip the non-stick varieties, which don’t hold up to the high temperatures of many wild game recipes.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 plucked duck, cut into pieces (2 breast fillets cut into 2-inch cubes, 2 leg quarters, and 2 wings)
- 1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage link, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 medium red onion, cut into wedges
- 2 apples, cut into wedges
- 2 pounds sweet potatoes, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon flaky salt
- 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
- 1 1/2 cups parsley leaves
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
PREPARATION
1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Line a large sheet pan with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, combine duck, sausage, onion, apples, and sweet potato cubes. Stir in olive oil, salt, and pepper until well coated.
3. Remove the leg quarters and wings from the bowl, place them on the sheet pan, and roast them for approximately 20 minutes.
4. Add breast pieces (skin-side up), onion, apples, sweet potatoes, and sausage to the other duck pieces on the pan and spread out in one layer. Roast for an additional 25 to 30 minutes, stirring a few times to baste the pieces in the rendered duck and sausage fat.
5. In a small bowl, combine parsley, lemon juice, and a bit of salt and pepper.
6. Serve the roasted medley with parsley-lemon finish drizzled on top.
Philadelphia Goose Steak Sandwich
There’s a current craze over flat-top griddles that has given new life to a very old kitchen implement. You can find propane-powered griddles that are large enough to cook breakfast for half a church choir, and you can find others that are small enough to stow away in a car trunk for a picnic-table feast. Unless you’re consistently feeding a crowd, the smaller, portable models are great for tailgate dining.
This sandwich recipe borrows from my love of Mongolian barbecue, which is neither Mongolian (it was developed in Taiwan) nor barbecue (barbecue is cooked on a grill over charcoal or open flame, while Mongolian barbecue is cooked on a specialized flat-top griddle). The dish is infinitely customizable with a nearly endless array of vegetables. I call it a Philadelphia goose steak sandwich only in that it involves meat and sautéed veggies on a hoagie roll, smothered with cheese. The big trick is shaving the thin strips of partially frozen goose breast. For that, a very thin and very sharp knife is required. A Japanese yanagiba knife is perfect for this.
INGREDIENTS
- 2 goose breast fillets, skin on or off
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt or 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
- 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
- 1/2 green bell pepper, sliced
- 2 roasted, peeled, and chopped poblano peppers
- 2 hoagie buns, butterflied but not separated
- Sliced provolone cheese
PREPARATION
1. Set the goose breast fillets on a plate and place in the freezer until the meat is firm, or partially thaw a frozen fillet. Slicing the meat thin will be easier with partially frozen meat. Shave the fillets against the grain as thinly as possible. Pile up the shaved meat and chop coarsely.
2. Add oil to the flat-top griddle on medium-high heat. Season meat with salt and pepper. Cook meat and all vegetables in a single layer until the meat browns on one side, about 5 minutes, and then stir the mixture as in a stir-fry until cooked, another 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Toast the buns on the griddle top.
4. Divide the goose and vegetable mixture into appropriate portions on the griddle. Add cheese to the top of each portion and melt.
5. Fill a hoagie with the good stuff and serve.
Whole Smoked Pintail
You can hardly walk through a sporting goods store these days without wading through a half-acre of smokers. The choices are bewildering—vertical smokers, pellet smokers, kamado smokers, and electric smokers all have their fans. But the best smoke flavor may come from an offset smoker, built with a firebox on the side that feeds smoke and heat into the actual cooking chamber.
This recipe comes from the new book Hunter Chef in the Wild by acclaimed Canadian adventurer, chef, and restaurateur Michael Hunter. “Pintails have a mild, clean flavor, and smoking complements the meat very well,” he says. “You can serve this hot or cold.”
INGREDIENTS
- 2 plucked pintails
- Olive oil, for brushing
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 bunch fresh rosemary
- 1 bunch fresh thyme
- 2 thinly sliced jalapeño peppers
- 2 thinly sliced Anaheim chilies (for more heat, leave the seeds in)
PREPARATION
1. Rinse the cavity of each duck with cold running water. Pat dry with a paper towel. Brush ducks with olive oil and season with a big pinch of salt and pepper. Stuff the cavities with rosemary and thyme. Place ducks on a wire rack set over a baking sheet and refrigerate, uncovered, overnight to dry (this helps the skin crisp while cooking).
2. Prepare an offset or digital smoker set at 200 degrees. Alternatively, prepare a charcoal or wood fire on an outdoor grill or fire pit and let the flames die down, leaving red embers visible. Set a grate over the fire.
3. Slowly smoke the ducks until the internal temperature reaches 130 degrees. For crispy skin, move ducks close to the heat for 1 to 2 minutes. Be careful not to burn the skin. Remove ducks from the smoker or grill and rest for 10 minutes.
4. Carve the meat into thin slices. Garnish with sliced jalapeños and chilies and serve with your favorite sides.
Duck and Onion Terrine
The prospect of cooking pâtés and terrines might scare the daylights out of many cooks, but they’re really not complicated. A specialized elongated pan called a “terrine mold” makes it all the easier. Skip the high-dollar earthenware and porcelain models and look for a stainless-steel mold with hinged sides. Metal conducts heat better, while the hinged sides make it easy to remove the cooled terrine.
For Texas chef Jesse Griffiths, a wild game terrine is a triple threat of awesome. “It stretches precious game proteins, tastes definitively of the thing, and keeps well,” says the wild game chef, author, and owner of Austin’s acclaimed restaurant Dai Due. “To the uninitiated, a terrine is simply a cold meatloaf—with my apologies to France for the oversimplification. But it takes on other flavors in ways that can’t be duplicated.”
To enjoy this delicacy, Griffiths offers a personal favorite: “After a solid post-hunt nap, I cut thin slices of wild duck and onion terrine, dress with a few favorite mustards, and chase with whatever pickles I can scrounge up in the refrigerator.”
INGREDIENTS
- 2 medium-sized whole ducks or 1 large mallard, cleaned and plucked with liver, gizzard, and heart to the side
- 1/4 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
- 3 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon duck fat, lard, or butter
- 2 thinly sliced large onions
- 6 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar
- 1 cup red wine
- 1 egg white
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon Instacure #1
PREPARATION
1. Fillet breasts from duck and set aside. Remove and debone the leg quarters. Combine the leg meat and liver and weigh: You need 1 pound total. If you have a pound, set this aside. If not, add enough breast meat to make a pound of duck meat and liver. Season this with the Chinese five-spice powder and 2 teaspoons of the kosher salt, and place in the refrigerator.
2. Dice the remaining breast meat, gizzard, and heart into 1/4-inch pieces and place in the refrigerator.
3. Place the leg meat and liver in the freezer and preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
4. Over medium-low heat, cook the onions, thyme, soy sauce, and brown sugar in duck fat or lard, stirring often, for about 20 minutes, until the onions are softened and browned but not burnt. Add the red wine and continue to cook another 10 to 15 minutes, until the wine is completely reduced and syrupy. Cool the onion and wine mixture in the refrigerator.
5. Add the leg meat and liver mixture, egg white, and remaining teaspoon of kosher salt to a food processor and blend until fairly smooth. Add the cream, onion powder, and Instacure, and continue processing until very smooth and fluffy. Transfer mix to a medium-sized bowl.
6. With a spatula, fold the cooked onion and diced breast meat, gizzard, and heart into the leg meat and liver mixture. Pack this mixture into a terrine mold and press it down to minimize air pockets. Place the lid on the mold and set in a larger, high-sided pan. Fill this pan with enough water to come halfway up the sides of the mold.
7. Place the pan in the oven and bake until the middle of the terrine registers 150 degrees. Immediately remove the mold from the larger pan and remove the lid. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 6 hours to chill fully. Unmold and serve cold with toasted bread, mustard, and pickles.
