Sea Duck question....

Had a seaduck guide up here give me a recipe for Eider. I havent tried it yet but:

breast and soak in buttermilk. Change buttermilk every 8 hours for 24 hours.

Grill in hot pan, leaving middle red, medium done.

Slice in half, and fill with Currant jelly.

He swears its like good roast beef.


It has got to beat the hell out of any other way I've tried to prepare them.
At least the jelly would be edible
 
Lou,
You and I would get along just fine. Bufflehead are a good chunk of my bag in the late season and honestly I consider them excelent table fair!

Here is a recipe I changed slightly from DU and it has quickly become my favorite way to prepair ducks this season.


1.) get up early dress warm and shoot 4 to 6 bufflehead.

2.) come home place all ducks on there backs on the stack of firewood on the back (unheated) porch

repeat above steps as often as possible :)

3.) after three or four days brest birds and soak in salt water overnight.

4.) the next day mix up the following marinade and place duck in it and freeze.

diver duck breast half-fillets (depending on size of ducks)
1/3 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar ( i use more)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Take out and thaw the night before you want to eat. Grill on high heat. Serve medium rare.

saute mushrooms, peppers, and or onions in a pan using some of the marinade.

Give it a try and I will do the same with yours!



 
Brandon,
Yup, I'd say that we'd get along just fine. But.....now you've got me hungry & I'm still at the shop. Gonna have to head home soon and cook up something. ;)
I'll have to give your recipe a try soon. Tnx.
Lou
 
That does sound good. I already have steps 1, 2 and 3 done. I think I have everything for the marinade so it should be easy to finish it off.
 
Hi Mike,

I followed Adam Heritage's recipe for the sausage. It was really easy and kind of fun. Do you have a meat grinder? I ran the sea duck breasts through the grinder and then added 2-3 pounds of ground pork to that along with some seasonings of my choosing - salt, pepper, paprika, ground fennel seeds, cayenne, handful of dried cranberries, some pine nuts, and a few other things. I mixed that all together thoroughly and then ran it back through the grinder and into sausage casings. It made about 8 pounds of sausage. Cooked them on the grill on low or in a fry pan. They were tasty!

Nate
 
Sorry for the delay, I've been up at deer camp in NH trying to get something to use in a venison sausage. No luck.

I'll try and post up the recipe that I put together for the Eider Sausage tonight. It's on my home system.

Adam
 
I am not the best cook with wild game, but if you like to shoot divers ducks and have trouble with the taste after awhile here is what I do. I fillet out all the good meat and cube it up. I then boil it in a pan long enough to get the blood out then strain off the fluid and rinse with cold water. I then place the meat into a food processor and shred it up fine. Take a pan and put it on medium high heat, add some oil then the shredded meat. You need to saute the meat to get out the sponginess from the boil. As you are cooking add in some Worcestershire sauce, I like Lea & Perrins. Add just enough to give the meat a glaze as it reduces. I also add in some minced garlic. Keep stirring as the fluids reduce and until the meat has a nice dark glaze. This is my basic meat prep stage. I then use it to add to a chili or spaghetti sauce or a lasagna sauce. I also freeze it in vacuum bags for future use. No one seems to notice the taste of the duck when used in a sauce.

.
 
Turns out I lost my exact recipe, but like Nate said, you can go with pretty much whatever you like to see in the way off additions to sausage.

Ouside of the duck, you'll need spices, ground pork, and sausage casings. I got my casings right at the local stop&shop. They are usually with the meats and are salt packed which need to be soaked in prep. You can also ask a butcher to if you have one around.

I made a pretty decent load - 8 or 10 Eider breasts that were soaked and rinsed several times over night. Cube them up and put them through a meat grinder. I added ground pork and mixed it up. It was about a 2/3 duck - 1/3 pork ratio. Technically, the more pork the better, but I like them a little leaner.

Come up with a general sausage spice mixture (pretty common in cook books). I'm pretty sure this is the spice mixture that I used as a basis.

3 parts salt
3 parts paprika
2 1/2 parts sugar
3 parts fresh ground black pepper
2 parts crushed red pepper
2 parts whole fennel seeds
2 part cayenne pepper
1 part ground cumin
1 ground sage
I threw in some garlic too

Someone once posted a great way to test the mixture and make sure you are happy with the flavor before you stuff. This helps from over seasoning:

You may want to alter things a bit according to your taste. Bring a small pot with water to a boil and after everything is mixed, take a quarter sized piece of meat and drop into the water to poach it. Taste and change seasoning accordingly.

I use my grinder to stuff the sausage. It comes with a nozzle attachement. You slide the casings on to the nozzle and crank it out.

Pan fried or grilled were my favorite ways, but smoked was good as well.



 
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Gumbo or casserole is a good use for them. I grew up eating bluebills, ringnecks, and buffies at least once a week. Would I roast a diver instead of a mallard? Probably not but more on that later . . .

Gumbo: four parts flour, three parts oil (try 1 cup flour and 3/4 cup oil) cook and stir over medium heat until you get a nice brown color (think dead oak leaves). Take half the roux and put it in a stock pot, add one diced onion, two diced green peppers, three diced celery stalks, a bay leaf, and a pinch of cayenne. Stir and cook over medium heat until the aroma starts to hit your nose (five minutes or so), add 1 lb smoked sausage and two cut up medium divers or three buffies (legs and thighs in one piece, wings and backs split,, cut up breasts, and any necks and giblets you saved) Cook and stir for five to ten minutes until everything is coated in roux and the sausage begins to smell. Toss in three chopped garlic cloves and then add six cups of water and a 1/4 cup red wine. Reduce to low and simmer for 1 1/2 hours until thickened. If you want to splurge, toss in some peeled shrimp and let simmer for 15 more minutes. Serve over rice . . . Good stuff.

Casserole: Rub quartered birds with SPG (salt, pepper, and a cut garlic clove), brown in unsalted butter or olive oil. Put the birds in a 9x13 baking dish along with a diced onion, one stalk of diced celery, a bay leaf, a small can of slice water chestnuts, and, if you want a 1/2 cup of slice fresh mushrooms. Add 1 cup of white rice and 1/2 cup red wine, and 1 1/2 cups of water. Cover with foil and bake at 325 for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until the liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.

Roasting? Well, maybe a redhead or can but Ted Nugents cook book has a recipe that I have used successfully (i.e tasty) on late season buffies. Take a dressed bird (actually three for a family meal), Rub inside and out with Lawry's season salt and refrigerate over night in a ziploc bag. Oil a roasting pan and then sprinkle the birds with lemon pepper, put slices of apple and onion in each bird, and more quartered apples and onions, and cut up carrots in the pan. Add 1/2 cup of wine and 1/2 cup of chicken stock to the pan. Put a slice of bacon on each bird, cover the pan and bake at 425 for 1 1/2 -2 hours (Ted says three but that may dry out the birds), basting every twenty minutes with the liquid. Tasty!
 
What He said. Buffies are especially good stir fried in a wok. Don't know about GE's as I've never shot but 2 and both were given to folks who wanted to have the birds stuffed as they are kinda rare in the areas I hunt. Any recipe that requires you to age and soak scoters will probably be OK.

You wil never get divers to taste better than chicken except for Canvasbacks that have been feeding on celery (JMO).

I have filled orders for folks who really enjoy the flavor of sea ducks, but if they are not going to be used I don't shoot.

If it's all about good meat, go rabbit or quail or pheasant hunting. Or save the money you spend on hunting and visit the butcher shop.

JMO,
Harry
 
I have a lot of experience with Canada geese. Some with Brant.

I like Brant. They eat mostly one thing by choice - sea grass. They will also eat other seaweed if they have to, but sea grass is the preference. A world wide sea grass blight in the 30s almost caused them to go extinct.

Before I got tired of killing them I shot a lot of geese. Treated properly they are very beef like and I had plenty of people who would take the "fileted" breasts. I was field hunting. Most are wounded. I ran em down, wacked them over the head, bled them & gutted them right away.
 
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