Roast Duck

I don’t make this very often, but if I happen to see a whole duck in my fridge, this is what I’ll do with it, since it’s so much easier than a confit. Roast ducks are good with glazes, but I generally don’t do that. The idea here is to let the duck cook in it’s own fat, to crisp up the skin. To accomplish this, you score the duck all over and then spend your time flipping it over in the oven a couple of times. This accomplishes two things: aside from exposing different areas of the duck to the heat, you’re allowing it’s own fat to ooze out and drip all over itself evenly. While you’re doing that, if you notice any area that isn’t rendering at the same pace as the others, you may prick it several times with a fork to help it along. The result should be a duck with very crispy skin and not a lot of fat left underneath it.

It’s a good idea to cook this on a rack if you have one. If you have a convection oven, the final 15 minutes can be cooked on this setting for the ultimate crispy brown skin.

As always when cooking a duck, save its rendered fat for other uses.

Ingredients:

• 1 5 lb (or so) duck
• boiling water
• salt and pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425.

Trim the wingtips, if necessary, from the bird and cut away large pieces of excess fat or skin. There should be a large deposit of fat right under the neck; you can pull this away with your fingers, but make sure to save it for later use. Using a sharp paring knife, score the breast side of the bird in a cross hatch pattern. Don’t cut so deep that you reveal the breast meat underneath the skin. Alternately, you can prick the breast skin dozens of times with the point of a knife – this really comes down to presentation and how you like it to look. If your scores are deep, I think it will look bad, but if you’ve got a nice gentle cross hatch it should do well. The effect of scoring vs pricking is negligible, as far as I know. I believe a cross hatch pattern on a duck breast is a more familiar look to the traditional French-style kitchen, but I could be wrong. Finally, I always like to truss a bird that I’m roasting. I’ve written about that here.

Pour boiling water all over the bird. This will tighten up the skin. If you’re using a rack, you can leave all the water at the bottom of the pan, but if not, discard the water. When the bird has cooled enough to handle, pour the water out from the cavity, dry it inside and out, then season aggressively in the cavity and all around the outside with salt and pepper.

Roast the duck for 45 minutes with the breast side up. Then flip it over prick the fatty areas where the leg meets the body with the point of your paring knife many times. (If at any point you notice any pockets of fat that do not seem to be rendering, prick them more.) Roast

Save your fat, make a sweet sauce and some roasted potatoes, serve and enjoy.