Duck Culinary Prep

S

Steve O

Active member
This isn't directly duck boat related, but I find the folks here so kind and helpful that it seemed a logical place to ask this question.

After turning many ducks into shoe leather, I've finally acquired sufficient skill to cook duck correctly (not perfect, but passable and palatable).

Still, I suspect there is a lot more room for improving the prep part of the equation.

So, I'm hoping for some folks who can share with me duck prep techniques (in the period from kill to grill) that they've found helpful.

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Steve,
The thing that makes wild game "gamey" is the blood. Sure it depends on what they are eating but blood in the meat in the largest reason for an off taste. You could shoot a bufflehead that is dining with canvasbacks in the wild celery flats and they taste great or you could have a bufflehead that has been dining on zebra mussles and it will have a whole different taste, like a seaduck.
There is a reason slaughter houses completely bleed out the animals or the tuna boats bleeding the tuna while they are alive. Now, it is harder for us duck hunters to bleed the birds we bag but soaking them in a mild salty brine (1 gallon water to 1/4 cup kosher salt) will help.

This next part is where I get A LOT of raised eyebrows and done improperly you are asking for a food borne illness. The process of tissue/muscle breakdown is done by either store bought tenderizers (YUK, nasty metalic taste) or letting your birds hang and hang. I have let ducks hang for up to 2 weeks and I can tell you when done in the proper climate (35-44 degrees) it will change the consistancy and flavor of the bird tremendously. If you plan on hanging your birds for more than 3 days or if you gut shot a bird take the entrails out and always (guts in or out) hang from the head not from the feet. If you have ever had true aged beef and I mean the kind they cut the mold off of....it is a flavor unlike any other beef you will eat. I don't recommend hanging your birds for an extended period of time if you plan on plucking the bird whole but rather breasting and thighing the bird.

Lastly is the cooking temp. Most wild game is always better med rare to medium. I super hot fire, skillet or pan will do the trick. I personally eat a mallard breast when the center is almost still cool, definitely rare for me. Case in point, take 2 pieces of tuna loin and cook one to well done and one to med rare. The well done isn't fit for the dog. Or do the same thing with beef tenderloin, world of difference in taste.

I have been in the food service business for 25 years and have had the opportunity to be around some incredibly talented and knowledgeable chefs. If you are really interested in getting into cooking wild game you can take a short drive to CT to one of my catering locations and one of my chefs and I can show you some kitchen tricks.

Or you can throw everything above out the window and get a bottle of Kikkomans terryaki sauce and marinate the hell out of it for 3 days!!! You won't be able to tell if you are eating chicken, cat, duck or squirrel!!

Jim/Fowlfishing
 
Duck is like squid, either you cook it 1 minute (rare) or 1 hour (braised until it is tender).

Couple of things, when pan searing, stir-frying or grilling wild duck, marinade the duck before cooking in your favorite marinade of choice and cook it rare. As in steak rare. Medium-rare at the most. Anything more and it will get tough fast.

If roasting whole or bone-in breasts, brine it like you would a turkey (use a lot less brine, brine at least overnight), if skinned cover in bacon, season & then roast. Once again, dont over-cook.


The other option is your friend the crockpot. Just about any recipe that works for slow cooking deer or beef will work with duck breasts. I like good old cream of mushroom soup, put in over the ducks & slow cook for 6 hours. Works with any cut of meat. I also make a good duck curry in the crock pot.
 
This isn't directly duck boat related, but I find the folks here so kind and helpful that it seemed a logical place to ask this question.

After turning many ducks into shoe leather, I've finally acquired sufficient skill to cook duck correctly (not perfect, but passable and palatable).

Still, I suspect there is a lot more room for improving the prep part of the equation.

So, I'm hoping for some folks who can share with me duck prep techniques (in the period from kill to grill) that they've found helpful.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Click to expand...


Give us a little more info...

What type of ducks are you preparing? What type of dishes are you after, ie whole birds or recipes that just call for breast meat??

I absolutely love cooking wild game and have been trying to hone my skills for years. I am always trying new things. I would love to help out anyway I can, but just need to know what you find appealing.

Best,
Steve
 
HI to you duck cookers.

Over the years I have found three things that can influence the taste of all most all wild game, from elk to duck.

They are:

  1. Blood - remove all that you can....salt water/brine....cold water washing.....removal of blood shoot tissue....and so forth
  2. Fat - fat can take the flavor of the critters diet......remove it and replace it with other fat when cooking if the dish needs it.
  3. Handling of the game.......don't let it lay around on some warm spot in the sun (seen it done when I outfitted big game).....Keep it cool.....get the innards out....Keep it clean....and so on and so forth
If I end up with let say a late season goldeneye that is suspect in the eating department I do the following:

  1. Soak it in salt water brine 1-3 hours
  2. Remove all skin and fat
  3. Cube the breast
  4. Remove any blood shot tissue during cubing
  5. Wash in cold water
  6. Marinate in a brown sugar. spices, herb mixture of your liking for 1-2 hours
  7. Sear the cubes in a hot pan with olive oil and garlic
  8. Prepare your favorite spaghetti and meat balls (the cubes) or something like beef stroganoff
Enjoy

Matt
 
I've really had a lot of luck aging ducks for anywhere between 5-12 days in the refrigerator. If I'm not looking to roast a whole bird, I like to pluck the breast and use game shears to cut across the ribs up to the wishbone, cut through the wishbones, and then lift out the whole breast on the bone with the skin still on. Then I rough pluck the legs, pop them out of joint, and cut them off too. Then I put them on a rack in a dish, cover the whole thing with saran wrap, and age them in my fridge. As far as aging time goes, you don't get much change before 5 or 6 days, anywhere from 6-15 days seems perfect.
When you're ready to eat them, cut the breasts off the bone, skin them, salt and pepper them, and sear them in a hot pan with butter until medium rare-let them rest on a plate about 3 minutes and slice them up-you'll have a hard time believing that you're eating duck! It'll be tender, juicy, and have just the right amount of ducky flavor.
By the way, this method is best for puddlers, for divers I recommend brining them like the other guys were saying above. I've even made a merganser taste passable after a good brine bath!
Probably the most important thing to remember is to treat duck like beef, not chicken. Rare to medium is probably best, depending on your tastes. Anything over medium to medium well will give you diminishing returns on the plate.
 
Rumikey

1- 10oz bottle soy
~3-4 oz of terryaki
~1 tsp garlic powder
~1/2-3/4 tsp of ginger powder
Add water if needed to make more marinade

Mix ingredients, breast out duck and cut duck breasts into strips (2 strips out of a small duck breast, 3 out of a mallard breast), put marinade and breast meat strips in a zip-loc bag, get rid of the air and seal. Let marinade 1-2 hours (mix the meat up in the bag a couple of times while marinating). I use sliced water chestnuts (I am told you are supposed to use whole water chestnuts), fold a strip of marinated duck breast around a slice of water chestnut. Stick a round tooth pick thru the meat and water chestnut. Wrap 1/3-1/2 of a strip of bacon around the duck meat and water chestnut. Grill until the bacon is cooked and eat.

If you cut strips of bacon in to thirds. 1 pound of bacon will do about 45 strips of duck, about the same for a small can of sliced water chestnuts.
 
I have come in from the marsh, breasted my ducks and cooked them this way. So the soaking them over night in garlic water doesn't do much to make them taste any better.....but here is my way of cookin ducks;

Take several duck breasts and soak them over night in water that has had garlic seasoning added to it. Dry the breasts and cut them into 3/4" cubes. In a bowl, place a stick of butter and melt it in the microwave. You need enough butter to coat the entire cubed duck. Now you need your OLDEST and HEAVIEST cast iron frying pan and a lid that will fit inside the pan. Heat the cast iron pan 'till it gets good and HOT. MIne gets WHITE HOT. Take the lid, bottom side up, and put in some melted butter and duck breast. In order to sear the meat properly, you want to cook about a hand full of duck cubes at a time, as this will allow the pan to remain hot. Generously sprinkle Cajun Seasoning over the duck and melted butter. The spicier the better. The seasoning I use and recommend is Chef Paul Prudhommes Magic Seasoning, Blackened Redfish Seasoning. www.chefpaul.com You can also try Tone's Cajun Seasoning, it's very good also. With the pan HOT, flip the lid containing the above mixture over and onto the pan. Let the duck cubes cook for about 30 or 40 seconds, then remove the lid and stir the duck. Put the lid back on and cook the duck up to four minutes, all the while stirring and checking, as you do not want to burn the duck. I like my duck a little rare and juicy and recommend it be served that way over a steaming bed of wild rice.


**One Important note about cooking this in your home, it makes a lot of SMOKE, and I mean, a lot of SMOKE. I cook my duck in a cast iron pan on my Coleman stove, OUTSIDE.

I use an older Coleman stove with white gas for fuel. The newer propane ones don't get the pan hot enough, in my opinion.
 

You can also soak the duck "breast" in milk for a day or two which will also pull the blood out and give the duck a more mild flavor.
Medium rare is the most you want to cook.
 
here's a new one i heard of while in arkansas this past week.havent tried it yet but sounds wonderful.cut you breast is small bite size pieces and soak until water is clear as others have already stated.mix old bay crab boil seasoning with flour, batter your ducks and fry.dip duck in cocktail sauce.
 
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If you pluck your ducks just deep fry them. This is my favorite way to eat duck if I take the time to pluck them. In the turkey fryer we can do 10 teal at a time for 10 minutes in 350 degree oil, a few more minutes on wood ducks and less than 15 on mallards. It also works great for geese.

If you have a Ronco rotisserie, just put a couple of plcked ducks on for 45 minutes if I remember correctly.

Duck stuffed with sauerkraut and baked is good.
 
I follow the sea duck method of staging all my shot birds on their backs in the boat while hunting. If there is any blood in the meat it will have a better chance of draining out of the meat of the breast. Most of the birds I take up here are still eating insects so they are much more gamey than what most folks are taking in the L48 at this time of year.

I like to leave my gutted birds in the bottom drawer of the fridge for two or three days unless they are really shot up. If shot up they get breasted and diced to be used for chili meat. I brine them for a day before cooking, but you could brine them for a day before freezing as well. If you are going to vac bag them cut along the spine and the crush them to break the ribs down so that the body will collapse. A food saver type vac system does not have enough power to pull out all the air and crush the body down. A friend has a commercial grade system and it does a great job of flattening out the birds.

When roasting whole birds you need to have all the same sized birds. If you have a mallard and a wigeon the wigeon will cook faster and be well done before the mallard gets to medium rare. I like to use oven roasting bags. A large one will fit two mallards in a large deep roasting pan. I like to use a dark beer such as a porter for the roasting liquid. I pre heat the oven to 450 and roast the mallards for about 20 minutes to 25 minutes. Smaller birds will be for a few minutes less. At 20 minutes I use an instant read thermometer to check the internal temp of the breast meat. 165 is just about perfect medium rare on a large mallard breast. Don't push it in too far or it will be up against the rib bones and might read too hot or too cold.
 
Wow. This is an incredible response. If I can put these tips to use maybe I'll actually get my wife to try my ducks again.

I'm going to try to save this thread somehow. It's too valuable to lose track of.

Jim, I would like to take you up on your offer. If possible, I'd love to bring one of my hunting partners and his son (who's also my godchild). We often share the waterfowl we cook, and the son (a high school senior) is considering applying to culinary school. I think this would be great.

Steve, we've killed and eaten a fairly wide variety of waterfowl here so far (blacks, mallards, ring neck, bufflehead, merganser, brant, Canada goose, teal, and widgeon). In recent years I've taken to breasting them out and cutting off the legs. Getting rid of the fat and skin seemed to help a lot with the results, though I wonder if I'm wasting too much by not using the other meat. I have no regrets about not consuming the fat and skin. I suspect it results in a much healthier meal.

Thanks so much to all.
 
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Steve,

Highlight the post you want to save, right click, copy, paste into Word or a Text Editor.

Name new file something you will remember, save in a folder where you can find it.

Anyway you get the idea.

Matt
 
Steve, we've killed and eaten a fairly wide variety of waterfowl here so far (blacks, mallards, ring neck, bufflehead, merganser, brant, Canada goose, teal, and widgeon). In recent years I've taken to breasting them out and cutting off the legs. Getting rid of the fat and skin seemed to help a lot with the results, though I wonder if I'm wasting too much by not using the other meat. I have no regrets about not consuming the fat and skin. I suspect it results in a much healthier meal.
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Excellent,
You have access to a bunch of different birds, and you can do a lot of neat things for the dinner table. Folks have alluded to some great tips.

I prefer to take my puddle ducks and pluck them, leave the guts, and hang in a controlled temp evironment; 35 - 40 degrees F is critical. I pluck my ducks initially, because I find them easier to pluck when they are fresh rather than after you age them. You can gut the birds, but as long as you are consistent with your temp, you don't have to gut them immediately. The only disclaimer is a gut shot bird.... Do gut it and then wash well and then age. I will age a bird for 5 - 7 days. When you look at studies of aging beef, you really don't gain much by aging them longer, only increased dry loss. I can email you these if you like.

Once I'm ready to cook, I like to do 3 different recipes for whole birds. One, is smoking. Two, beer can duck. Three, spatchcock duck. If you have access to a smoker, take hickory, and warm smoke the bird to an internal temperature of 140F. By keeping the skin on, it makes the meat incredibly tender, and with monitoring your internal temp, you won't turn it into "liver". Beer can duck -- self explanatory. Just make sure you put a thermometer probe and pull at 140F and allow to rest off the can for at least 10 minutes. Then slice. You can season the raw bird however you like. Definitely experiment with different spices. That is the fun of it!! Lastly, spatchcock duck is a spin on a chicken technique. Cut the spine out of the bird, and butterfly like you would a chicken. Take a regular masonry brick and wrap in several layers of aluminum foil. Put in the oven for an hour to heat the brick @ 400F. Take a cast iron skillet and fry 1/4 lb bacon and onions. Take your butterflied bird and season well on both sides, and place skin side down in skillet. Then pull the brick and place on top of bird, and then place into oven. Monitor temp with a probe, and pull at 140F and allow to rest. With the preheated brick, this will cook much faster than without. I will also use BBQ sauce with this as well. I've never had anyone not like this recipe.

With divers, I tend to take the breast meat only. I just don't prefer whole birds. By all means you can try the above recipes though. I also cut my meat into the form I am going to cook it. If stir fry, then cut it into 1/4 strips, cubes for poppers etc. I then take the meat and cover with baking soda and water, and agitate and soak for ~30 mins. Nothing exact. I will do this 1 or 2 times, and then wash the meat really well with water. I then will take that meat and soak overnight in buttermilk or plain yogurt. This will really tame strong tasting meats!! The following day, wash well and drain. You can go ahead and season and cook, or freeze the meat. For very strong ducks, you can also freeze the meat in the marinade. The only danger is using a soy sauce marinade, then it will be too salty.

For Canada geese, I simply grind into burger. This is one time with my ground meat I do add pork fat. I like to do 3 lbs of ground goose to 1 lb of ground bacon. Add mushrooms, jalapenos, shredded parmesan in whatever amounts you like, make patties and grill.

As mentioned, the key to duck is hot and fast and don't overcook. That is why I always use a thermometer when I cook whole birds.

Have fun! Don't ever be afraid to experiment. If it doesn't turn out, get back out hunting to re-stock!!

Best,
Steve
 
If you'd like to make a stew out of ducks , or just about any other critter, my Grannies Bavarian heart stew recipe is great.

In bottom of pot, saute 1 onion, till almost soft, add your chunks and brown lightly. Veg. oil works, but bacon grease or lard is tastier.You can also add celery if you must, garlic is mandatory, lol. add salt, pepper, bay leaf, or bayberry leaves. Cover with water and add a couple glugs of vinegar, white is best. Think of it as a light sauerbratten.

Let it simmer till chunks are tender, alternatively, assemble and start on stove top in a dutch oven, and put into low oven, covered, for as long as you want. Sort of like a crock pot, but better.

Now for the magic, make a roux in a separate pan, cook it stirring constantly, you cajuns already know this, till at least a med. beige color, the darker it is the more flavor, I like it almost brown.
Add this to your stew and stir in quickly. It will thicken up a lot, this is a good thing!
ladle this over egg noodles, smashed potatoes, toast,....

If it's not the best tasting stew you ever had, you did something wrong. :)
 
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Duck is like squid, either you cook it 1 minute (rare) or 1 hour (braised until it is tender).

That's what I say. Most people I know cook game too much. My mom used to just wave it near the pan (almost)........ just right. I like it pink in the center. I mostly skin the ducks because it is faster to clean, but I really like browned skin on the outside like chicken. Plucking ducks has always been a chore for me. I don't use a lot of marinade either. Just salt and pepper. God, I'm getting hungry typing this....
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My wife says I should give you this recipe. I won a shotgun with it in a Ducks Unlimited contest last year.

Almond Duck

You need two boneless, skinnless duck breasts (each cut in half) one egg, two tablespoons of milk, 1/2 cups of crushed almonds, 1/4 teaspoon of sage, salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil.

Rinse and dry fillets. beat the egg and place in a bowl with 2 Tbls milk. Crush enough almonds to make 1/2 cup. Place crushed almonds in a pie plate and season with sage, salt and pepper.

Coat a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil and preheat. Dip fillets in the milk-egg mixture then roll in the almonds. Place fillets in pan and cook each side until brown. Turn only once.

Its easy, doesn't take too many ingredients, and its GOOD! I like this with a tosseed salid and a glass of wine.

Dave
 
Hey, Doc.
Here's a new trick I learned recently. If you go to your better purveyor of cheese, they shred their own Parmesean. Ask to buy the rind. Grind it in with your goose meat instead of using the higher priced cheese. Rind's a little stronger tasting (kind of like sun-dried vs. fresh tomato) and does a better job. And, it's cheaper!
 
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Enough recipes here for at a least season. Got a few bufflehead yesterday. Haven't cooked 'em yet, but did do the brine as suggested.
 
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