I made duck last night.
It's not something I do often because it's kind of a pain in the butt to do it right.
I decided to do it the Alton Brown way. 100% by the book. No variations.
To sum up the procedure:
- Remove wings and back from duck.
- Cut duck into quarters.
- Soak quarters in brine for 2.5 hours or so.
- Steam quarters for 45 minutes.
- Crisp skin in a "NASA Hot" cast-iron skillet in the oven.
A major plus for this technique (steam then sizzle) is that a huge amount of precious duck fat collected on top of the steaming water. I managed to collect about five ounces of fat by boiling off the rest of the water. I'm going to use it to fry up some potatoes later this week.
The meat on my duck was delicious. The skin that touched the hot skillet was delightfully crispy. But the rest of the skin was just plain soggy and nasty. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that.
On the other hand, my friend Rich ate his part of the duck like he
hadn't eaten in weeks. So maybe I'm being overly critical.