Roasted Duck

In Spain, where I live, ducks are pretty hard to come by, so when I found a frozen one in my Lidl supermarket, I thought, why not give it a try. In Denmark, where I was born, we always ate duck for Christmas and for a local holiday called Morten's aften ("The eve of St. Martin") which refers to a myth of Saint Morten of Denmark who out of humility didn't want to become a bishop. He hid amongst geese to avoid being found, but the trecherous little animals started making lots of noise and he was found after all. The first thing he decide as bishop was that everybody should butcher and eat a goose on the 11th of November. Today the duck has taken it's place on the dinner table in stead.

Here's my version of roasting the duck whole. It can be quite tricky as the temperature you need for making the meat tender and juicy is much lower than what you need for making the skin crispy. Many chefs prefers to cook it in parts, but when you are busy making all the traditional side dishes, such as red cabbage and caramelized potatoes (recipes to follow soon), it's easier just to leave it whole in the oven.

Ingredients:
1 duck, neck and wing tips removed (and reserved)
5l water
400 g salt
1-2 apples
1 bag of prunes
pepper
butter
Sauce:
Wing tips, neck, heart
1 carrot
1 onion
1 twig of rosemary
1 glass of red wine
chicken stock
some prunes
1/2 apple
spoonful of butter
spoonful of duck dripping
1 spoonful of flour

Stir the 400g of salt in the 5l of water until it's completely dissolved, submerge the duck in the brine for 6 hours. Throw away the brine, put the duck in fresh water to rinse for 1 hour, change the water evey 15 minutes. Leave the duck to dry completely for 24 hours covered in the fridge.

Remove excess fat from the area around the back.

Press down hard on the breast to crack the chest bone. This will make it flatter and ease the roasting and carving.

Cut the apple into smaller pieces, get a handful of prunes.

Sprinkle tem with pepper.This is easier than sprinkling pepper inside the bird.

Stuff the bird with the apples and prunes. You then need to close the bird a bit. I do this by making a few holes through which I pull a string to "sew" it. You can simply just tie the legs together as well.

Then you need to perforate the skin all over, with about a couple of centimetres between each pinch. Don't go through to the meat, this is only to give the fat (the skin is impermeable skin) a way to get out during cooking. This will help crispying up the skin.

Then sprinkle it with black pepper and baste it with some melted butter. The butte is used because the sugars in the butter will caramelise and turn the skin to a lovely dark brown colour. Put it in the oven on a grill above a roasting tray with a bit of water to collect the prippings. The oven needs to be pretty hot to start with to start roasting the skin. Set it at 240º. Give it 30 minutes with the breast side down.

Meanwhile for making the sauce, fry the wings,neck and heart with a carrot and a chopped onion. Add a twig of rosemary.

When everything has got some colour, add a glass of redwine and let it reduce to half. Then add chicken stock until everything is covered and leave to simmer while the duck roasts away. See later how to finish the sauce.

After the initial 30 minutes, turn the bird over and sprinkle the top (now the breast side) with coarse salt. Lower the temperature to 180ºC and leave it roasting slowly.

I'm basting here, but have just learnt that you shouldn't (Alton Brown on Google and Food Network Thanksgiving). So, don't! Use a meat thermometre to decide when the meat is done. When the thickest part of the breast or thigh reached 75º it's cooked. In my case it took about 2h 30m. If you want, you can add some extra apples and prunes into the roasting tray.

Leave the bird rest for 10-15 minutes while you finish off the sauce. Don't cover it, or the crispy skin will go soft. I forgot to take a picture of the sauce making, but basically I strained and reserved the fond from the fried wings and neck, melted a bit of butter with some duck fat drippings and then made a roux by frying a spoonful of butter in the fat. After a minute I added the fond and slowly warmed it up while stirring and then tasted for salt and pepper.

To cut the breast, cut down along the chest bone of the bird and around the the upper part of the thigh. The meat, if properly cooked, will come off by itself.

Here's the duck breast served with boiled potatoes, red cabbage and caramelized potatoes (recipes to follow soon).