As defined in Larousse Gastronomique, offal is “The edible internal parts and some extremities of an animal… it therefore includes the head, feet, and tail, and all of the main internal organs. The offal from poultry is called giblets.” While most people in the Western world wouldn’t have any qualms about throwing duck giblets into boiling water to make a stock or gravy, many would balk at the thought of eating a heart, liver or gizzard on their own. In reality, these parts of a duck are very enjoyable to eat and have a wonderful, pronounced flavor. Think of them like meaty bacon – good as a garnish, good by themselves, and good as ingredients incorporated into recipes.

All of these organs can be cooked and eaten any way you want. I decided to confit the heart and gizzards and make a pate de foie gras out of the liver… both dishes were so incredible that I can’t wait to do it again and, furthermore, can’t wait to try new recipes with them. What surprised me when beginning my giblet journey is there’s a whole subculture of chefs out there who are absolutely crazy about eating innards! Not too long ago, I agreed with the masses that these parts of a bird had no other purpose than to flavor a stock. I have now been converted to the other side and am eager to rush out and buy a bag of duck livers and gizzards as soon as possible. The recipes I’m about to share with you are decidedly inspirational. Besides knowing how good giblets can taste, this kind of cooking is truly a new frontier in eating both for me and many others out there because not a lot of people have discovered these ingredients yet. Cooking something new and wonderful gets me excited about cooking in general. I hope these offal recipes and ideas have the same effect on you and yours!

The duck innards most commonly eaten are the gizzards, heart and liver. The heart of a duck is very tiny – so petite, in fact, that my duck heart almost got lost in the shuffle when I was cooking it with the gizzards. Oh the gizzards, the divine morsels of meat that are much larger than the heart, come in pairs, and look like red lumps. Gizzards, before they hit your kitchen, are actually a digestive pouch in ducks acting as their second stomach. One of my ducks came with two gizzards, a heart, and a liver while my other duck came with none of the above. Make sure you buy a duck that includes the innards or you will be sorely disappointed. Gizzards and hearts can be cooked with the bird, deep fried, roasted, poached, boiled, ground, grilled, sautéed… you can really treat them both like any other meat… however, I gather that slow cooking and not over cooking produces the most desirable textures overall.

Confit hearts and gizzards

The recipe I tried for my first experience eating the heart and gizzards of a duck (or of any animal, really) was Geisers de Canard Confits. Simply put, these are the gizzards marinated and then slowly cooked in duck fat. I decided to toss in the heart as well. It is said that the heart and gizzards tend to be chewy, but if you decide to poach them confit they can be as supple as any meat prepared in a confit. To start, thoroughly rinse off the meats and then the recipe prescribed marinating them for 24 hours in your favorite seasonings. I marinated mine in a little bowl with garlic powder, salt, and thyme but didn’t give it the prerequisite 24 hours. They ended up marinating only 2 or 3 hours, however it seemed sufficient. Heat your oven to 110°C (or 225°F). Before dunking them into the fat, rub away excess marinade with a paper towel and make sure they are as dry as you can get them. A dry marinade with salt added in works well for confit because the salt continues to remove moisture from the meat as it’s marinating. The point of confit is to eventually remove all moisture from the duck so it can be properly preserved and stored.

After situating your meat in the pot, fill it up with duck fat or olive oil until it just covers the top of the meat. Put it in the oven for 2-3 hours depending on how much meat you have cooking. A good way to test if the meat is cooked is to see if a knife can easily cut through it. Be careful, though! I suggest removing the gizzard or heart from the fat before poking it. I didn’t do this and hot grease spewed out everywhere on the counter and on me. Another thing to remember is if you want to cook hearts and gizzards, consider doing them in separate dishes because it won’t take the hearts nearly as long to be ready and you don’t want to overcook them. When they’re done cooking, like any confit, you can either eat them on the spot hot from the oven or go ahead and store them in air-tight containers surrounded by the fat they were cooked in. To prepare them from storage just take them out, slice them up if you want, and sauté them in a hot pan for a few moments. While I ate mine immediately on their own- and by the way they are heavenly that way- I hear they’re great sautéed and used as a topper for salads too. Jaques Pepin suggests putting sautéed duck giblets onto an escarole salad dressed with a lovely vinaigrette of shallots, Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, duck fat and olive oil.

and over rice

Another recipe I found that I’m eager to try is gizzards, hearts and mushrooms sautéed over rice. Put about 120ml (or ½ cup) of olive oil in a pan and get it hot. Pick out your favorite smaller mushrooms, halve, and throw them into a skillet along with about 900 grams (2 lbs) of gizzards and hearts. Cook over high heat until the mushrooms are browned, then add a cup of your favorite wine, port or sherry and reduce to medium heat. Add some minced garlic, parsley, thyme or tarragon, and pepper and salt to taste. Continue to cook the mixture for 20-25 minutes, adding more of the wine, port or sherry as needed. If you don’t like rice, you could even put this dish over pasta too. If you like cream sauces, why not add a touch of cream towards the end? Soy sauce, lemon juice and onions would be another great combination to sauté giblets in. This way of cooking gizzards and hearts is very versatile, cost effective, and extremely easy to put together.

Sous vide

The very next recipe I’m going to make with gizzards when I can get my hands on about 10 of them is cooking them sous vide and confit at the same time! All you do is pack them in a single layer in a heavy duty freezer bag, surround them with liquid duck fat or olive oil, and after getting as much air out of the bag as possible you seal and submerge the bag into 60°C (or 135-140°F) water. If you’re having a hard time submerging the gizzards, it means you have too much air still trapped in the bag. Try sealing most of the bag and sticking a straw in a little opening in one of the corners and suck out as much air as you can… I have done this and it works! Cook the gizzards for at least 4 hours. It isn’t hard to maintain this temperature over low heat and it’s perfectly safe with the freezer bag as they are made to sustain extreme temperatures. If you feel nervous at all, put a silicon mat in the bottom of your pot so your bag isn’t directly touching it. If you are patient and have the time, leave your gizzards in for up to 8 hours to get them even softer; after you’re done, you can eat them right away or add them to another dish.

Another interesting recipe I saw for sous vide gizzards has a marinade of salt and thyme and a dressing to drizzle on them after they’re done cooking made of mushrooms sautéed in duck fat or olive oil, shallots, and garlic with some thyme and verjus.

… or super simple

If all of this sounds too adventurous to you just yet, consider pan-frying the gizzards and hearts in a little butter or fat, mincing them up, and adding them to your traditional bread-stuffing recipe. There’s no shame in easing in!

A purportedly natural cough remedy that is by some more prized than the duck breasts even, gizzards and hearts thankfully can be very cheap to purchase. Take a look at your local grocery and butcher and see what they offer you. Fortunately it has not caught on yet how delicious these organs are, so since there are less people seeking them out there are deals to be had. If you have a hard time finding them in an average grocery, check out an Asian market and see if they happen to carry them. Anywhere you get them they likely will come frozen, but this is perfectly fine since it is said that freezing the giblets does not hurt the flavor or texture.

The liver

The duck’s, of all the assorted edible livers, is considered to be one of the best you can eat, whether it’s been specially fattened or not. As with gizzards, there are many things one can do with them. They can even be cooked and eaten whole, but I decided to do something a little less boring this time around; I decided to make a pate de foie gras out of mine. There are 3 terms you really should know to be able to intelligently discuss duck liver that are all related to one another and are sometimes confused: Foie Gras de Canard, Pate de Foie Gras de Canard, and Mousse Foie Gras de Canard.

One of the most culturally French foods in the world, Foie Gras literally translates in English to “fatty liver.” While some are stringent in their opinions that the term foie gras can only apply to a properly fattened goose liver, Larousse Gastronomique lists duck along with goose and makes no special addendum when terming both fatty livers as foie gras. What is special about French foie gras is that it is legally mandated by French law that 80% of the content of pate de foie gras has to be made of goose or duck liver that has been specially fattened; the fattening process is said to create a more sweetly decadent, fattier liver. Foie gras made outside of France can be made from goose or duck livers that are naturally fed, but technically the resulting dish cannot be considered a true foie gras. Some states in the United States even have laws against products derived from force-feeding animals and therefore have no true French-style foie gras at all. In America, it is said that 80% of the foie gras sold here is made from duck. Unless you travel to France, expect to get a less traditional type of foie gras made from a duck or just a mock foie gras made from a naturally fed duck or goose liver… or both.

Foie gras de canard, sometimes confused elsewhere as pate de foie gras, is just the fatty liver of a duck. What you do with your foie gras is up to you! Besides just modestly cooking and eating it whole, you can grind the liver up with flavors and spices and create pate de foie gras to serve either by itself sliced up like a bread loaf or serve it on pastry, bread or crackers of some sort.

Pate de foie gras

While you can confit the livers to make pate de foie gras, I chose to simmer them in spices. Get a large pot, fill it with water and add some salt, spices and herbs. I chose a few bay leaves, some whole peppercorns, and salt. You can really add whatever you want, but I chose to keep it simple. Bring the water to a quick boil and then bring it down to a simmer for 10 minutes to bring out the flavors in your spices. Add your duck livers and simmer for another 5 minutes or so for a total of about 15 minutes. The livers should still be a bit pink inside, so to judge adequately, think about 5 minutes of simmering for each 450g (or 1lb) of liver. I only had livers from one duck so I simmered the livers for about 2 minutes. When they’re done, drain the livers, remove the spices and put the livers in a big bowl along with butter, diced onion, mashed garlic, dry mustard, chili powder, apple vinegar and bourbon. If you don’t like one of those items, feel free to omit it and/or add in something else, like nutmeg, juniper berries or even cinnamon. Use about 120g (or 1 stick) of butter, 1/3 of an onion and 4 cloves of garlic per 450g (or 1lb) of liver, and employ the rest of the spices to taste. A splash of each liquid should be enough. When you’re done, mash everything together with a fork. Taste it, and add salt or more of a particular spice if you think the mixture needs it. Find a pretty, shapely dish to put your pate de foie gras in and let it chill. When it’s done you can either unmold the pate and slice it or you can simply spoon it and spread onto toast or crackers. I loved this recipe- I actually used it to make a quesadilla with some of the leftovers (I’ll get into that recipe in a subsequent article!).

Getting lost in translations

Loosely translated as bread of fatty liver of duck, pate de foie gras de canard confused me at first. Pate, in French, means some sort of pastry, dough, batter or pie. So, it made perfect sense that when talking about a pate, it was not about some French meatloaf sans pastry. Julia Child and Martha Stewart seemed to agree that a meatloaf lined with bacon and cooked in a terrine constituted a pate that was sometimes called a terrine. I thought to myself, how does that make sense when the French word directly means some sort of pastry? Anyways, to bridge the culinary gap between terms, I believed at first that pate de foie gras had evolved into something much more practical than pie-like pastry with foie gras. I began to think we’ve merely substituted fancy baked pastry for toasted bread and crackers. It made perfect sense and it was immediately understandable why the essential piecrust associated with the name of the dish fell by the way. I still wondered, why are so many pate de foie gras dishes served without a cracker or other breaded accoutrement? It wasn’t until much later that I realized something else: pate is another word for bread. Perhaps pate de foie gras got its name because it was literally a loaf of meat! Finally. My troubled thoughts had been satisfied. It turns out, the proper name for pate baked in a pastry or pie is called “pate en croute” and when pate is baked in a terrine, it is properly called “pate en terrine.” It all seems so straightforward now. Perhaps with this thorough explanation, some of you won’t have to experience the frustration I went through trying to sort through the terminology!

I’ve seen a few great recipes for foie gras recently. Jaques Pepin published a recipe for “Duck Liver Pate”: a recipe for foie gras served with bread. With ever-delicious duck fat in the hot pan, you brown some shallots, add in one foie gras, some herbes de Provence (a compilation of herbs typical of Provence such as savory, fennel, basil, thyme and rosemary) and some fresh garlic. Cook over medium high heat for a minute or so before adding salt and pepper. Put everything into a blender with a splash of Cognac and puree. For extra smoothness, put the mixture through a fine strainer. Chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and serve with toasted baguettes or crackers. Just so you’re aware, if for some weird reason you don’t finish your pate that day, it will keep covered in the refrigerator for about 4 days. While pate is, some say, the best way to enjoy duck liver as it is such a pure concoction, another way to enjoy duck liver and elongate the experience is to make mousse foie gras de canard.

et la mousse

Mousse foie gras de canard, or fatty liver of duck mousse, is about 55% duck liver whipped together with cream, eggs, and spices baked in a terrine and served hot or cold. Sometimes called a parfait (though parfaits are officially known to be chilled sweet desserts, not savory mousses), this type of dish is as complicated and gorgeous as it sounds. I have not had the privilege of trying this dish yet, but I’ve collected a small arsenal of recipes standing at the ready to serve me when I get the opportunity.

A talented chef from the Culinary Institute of America suggested a somewhat simple mousse foie gras recipe in one of his video blogs. You start by marinating the liver in brandy for a day, then pour it all into a blender with eggs and cream. While it is mixing away, drizzle in some duck fat. Mix until it is well blended and smooth. Put the whole thing into a terrine (again a sort of meat-loaf style mold) that is sitting in a water bath (properly termed a Bain-marie). Bake for about a ½ an hour in the oven at 175°C (or 350°F). The mixture will set up into a rich mousse- a seemingly impressive sight to behold! I look forward to trying this recipe soon when I gather enough duck livers to fill a terrine. It continues to amaze me how limited our food supply is in such a populous area of this country.

While the previous recipe is admittedly a bit vague as far as exact measurements, another interesting recipe that is more specific includes 570g (or 1¼lb) of duck livers, 450g (or 1lb) of hard pork fat, 180ml (or 6oz) of cream, 6 egg yolks, 55g (or 2oz) of salt, 1 teaspoon of mixed spices and 60ml (or 2oz) of brandy. Just puree the livers and pork fat together with the seasonings in the blender, then add the brandy, cream and egg yolks. When it’s finished, pour everything into a terrine sitting in a Bain-marie and cook in a 160°C (or 325°F) oven for about 25 minutes or until firm. When it cools a bit, pop it in the refrigerator and serve cold the next day. When you feel confident, change around a few of the ingredients while maintaining the same sort of ratios. To have fun in the kitchen and be a true chef you need to develop a sense of what foods are going to do with each other, and there is no better teacher than experience. This mousse dish excites me because I feel how very adaptable it really is. Some ingredients you may want to play with in this recipe are shallots, garlic, different liqueurs, nutmeg, thyme, rosemary, Balsamic vinaigrette and dry mustard. Another idea is to layer the pate with asparagus in the terrine so when you carve into it there is a very appealing design.

A great type of mousse to make from repurposed, already cooked pate de foie gras is Mousseline de Volaille by Julia Child. Basically, you cook a handful of shallots with butter and 475ml (or 2 cups) of stock to start. She suggests mixing in gelatin, however I don’t like to cook with gelatin. If you want to use it, she says add a couple of envelopes- or 2 tablespoons. Put the mix into a blender along with two cups of cooked duck and a ½ cup of cooked foie gras. Feel free to take out some more of the duck meat and replace it with more liver. Puree all of the ingredients together in the blender. Add a few tablespoons of brandy or wine and some pinches of salt and nutmeg. In a chilled bowl with a chilled whisk, beat 175ml (or ¾ cup) of whipping cream until it has doubled in volume. Fold the puree into the whipped cream and put it into a mold. For this sized dish, a 1.5-1.75l (or 6-8-cup) mold works best. Julia suggests refining the dish by lining the mold at the bottom with congealed stock jelly, but I find this somewhat repulsive so I would just say use a nonstick mold, cover the entire thing with wax paper and let it chill for many hours before serving.

Over to you

I hope I have made you think twice about just tossing duck gizzards, heart and liver meats into a stock or -gasp!- just throwing them away altogether. If you have problems locating big bags of frozen duck innards, please don’t lose hope and be resourceful. Call up any market, specialty store, farmer’s market and butcher you can think of. If you can’t have them for the moment, I found that everyplace I called had chicken gizzards and chicken livers at least. You can substitute chicken for duck if you can’t wait. What’s comical is most food purveyors sell chicken gizzards but act like it’s so odd when someone requests duck gizzards! Is it truly that far of a leap? If you encounter this attitude from someone, ignore them, continue on your search, and enjoy the chicken innards for the meantime. After trying the duck gizzards, heart, and liver just once, I feel as if a whole new world of cooking has opened its doors to me. It’s like discovering chicken for the first time. While these 3 innards are certainly an adventure to be had, there is an even more mysterious world of innards awaiting you in duck cooking! In the next article, I will delve into cooking and utilizing the head, neck and feet of a duck. You may be surprised at what you can do beyond the stockpot with these items as well!

The most sought-after parts of the entire duck by far are the body, wings and hinds (legs and thighs). There are thousands of recipes out there on how to cook these parts. While the variations are endless, there is a limited list of ways to execute these variations. Basically, you can roast, braise, confit, sous vide, grill or fry the main duck parts. While there are six main ways to cook duck, there are some methods that are understandably more popular than others. Since grilling and frying are somewhat generic meat preparations and are already pretty common among chefs, I will focus my discussion on roasting, followed by the sous vide method, then confit, and lastly braising.

Roast duck

If you decide to bypass the extensive butchering process and simply want to roast the whole bird, roasting is thankfully a simple and straightforward task. Unlike roasting a turkey or chicken, you don’t need to rub fat on the skin and you don’t need to constantly baste it to keep in the moisture. You can choose to brine a duck, but the brining process is mostly used to make a bird juicier… the duck really doesn’t need that kind of help. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a duck and chicken cook the same way.

To start preparing to roast a duck, pull out a v-shaped rack and sturdy roasting pan. The duck definitely needs a rack of some sort to help with rendering fat and to encourage even roasting (Editors note: If you don’t have one, you can put some big chunks of root vegetable in the bottom of the tray and sit the duck on top of them).. After making sure you removed the innards and rinsed the duck, pat it dry inside and out. Place it on the rack breast side up. Then, take a sharp knife and make a shallow crosshatch pattern on the breast skin (not the flesh!) of the duck. This step allows the fat to properly render while the bird is roasting. Season the skin with salt and pepper. If you want to, you can tie the legs back with twine to let it roast in a traditional shape. I prefer to cook my birds without the twine since I find they tend to cook more evenly. Set your oven to 150°C (or 300°F) and just let your duck sit out while it’s warming up (letting your duck get a little closer to room temperature and dry a bit more helps the cooking process). Ducks should be placed in an oven at a much lower temperature than a turkey or chicken to help it render fat and cook properly. Cook a bird of 2.5kg (or 5.5 pounds) for approximately 1 hour. Take it out, remove some of the fat if necessary, and flip it over before returning it to the oven. Cook the bird one more hour and flip it over again. After another hour, pierce the bird and check the juices. If they run a clear-yellow, the bird is done. If the juices are rosy, leave it in a bit longer. I found my bird was looking a tad dry at this point, so I drizzled some of the rendered fat over the body of the duck.

Don’t get overwhelmed by different recipes- there are many recipes out there telling you the “correct” way to roast a duck and some have very different opinions on the issue. For example, Julia Child suggests a really hot oven and a complicated flipping method that gets the duck out in under two hours time. I decided to go for a much lower heat and more time with less flipping, loosely shadowing a Martha Stewart method. Really, you just need to flip the duck every once in a while, give it some help if it’s getting dry, and check the juices when it’s looking done to see if it’s ready. Not every bird is the same size, not every oven is the same, etc. I prefer the lower oven temperature because you as the cook have more control and it’s not as fussy or demanding. When I saw the bird was looking thirsty but still needed to cook more, I scooped up some pan juices on it and that was that. Try to develop your own feel for what constitutes dryness and doneness when roasting a bird. Isolated instructions, like any recipe, can only go so far in getting you to that beautiful roasted duck. I tend to use recipes as guidelines… mere suggestions in a world of culinary uncertainty.

To make your roasted duck even better and more interesting, try making a complementary tart sauce to go with it. Duck a l’orange, for example, is just a roast duck with an orange sauce. A simple and fresh way to make an orange sauce is mixing a ¼ cup each of honey and pomegranate molasses with a couple tablespoons of orange juice. Martha Stewart recommends bringing this mixture to a boil and then simmering until the sauce is a syrup consistency. Use this basic recipe as a guide to experiment and branch off with other base ingredients such as red wine vinegar, or even just lemon juice instead orange juice… canard au citron! Julia Child suggests a wonderful sauce recipe for roast duck in her cornerstone book Mastering the Art of French Cooking that includes 45 red cherries cooked with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of port or cognac and 3 tablespoons of sugar… I’m definitely trying this one next time!

Sous vide

My absolute favorite way to cook a duck, by far, is the sous vide method. A cooking technique very popular among top chefs of today, sous vide in French literally means “under vacuum.” A variation on traditional poaching, the meat is cooked in an airless bag floating in a pot of water with a constant temperature of 57°C (or 135°F). With this method, the meat retains almost all of its juices, as well as it’s original size and shape, all while being cooked evenly to an adequate 57°C (or 135°F) internal temperature. While complicated machinery exists for this method, it is entirely unnecessary. All you need, besides one or more duck breasts, is a heavy-duty freezer bag, a straw, a silicone mat, a large pot and an accurate cooking thermometer.

I prepared mine with two duck breasts, so the recipe I’m about to tell you is skewed for two breasts and not for one, just so you’re aware.

To begin, you need to cross-hatch, marinate and bag your breasts for at least an hour – preferably longer. I used fresh thyme, salt and pepper on both sides of the duck for a simple but flavorful seasoning. Make sure the breasts are both facing the same way when you put them in the bag, and use the straw like a vacuum to seal up the bag with as little air inside as possible. Bags with little or no air should sink when they’re in the water instead of floating. I am not aware of any health risks associated with breathing in raw duck air… I did it and I’m okay… but if you decide to use a straw for this purpose, you do so at your own risk. If you’re concerned at all please research this further before you do it. After you completely seal the bag, sink it into a large pot with a water temperature of 57-60°C (or 135-140°F). Make sure your silicon mat is sitting underneath the bag inside the pot. This is to make sure the temperature at the bottom of the pan doesn’t bother your bag at all. Now for the only tricky part of this process: you must stand by the burners most of the time to monitor and ensure the temperature of the water stays at this exact range for the entire cook time. I left mine in for about 1½ hours and the breasts can apparently stay in the water up to 3 hours (or even longer some say), but that sounded way too long to me. 1½ hours was quite enough.

After you take the duck breasts out of the bag, place them in a heated pan of olive oil to brown a bit, the fat side down. The fat will provide a protective barrier and prevent the meat from cooking too much more. Serve the duck breasts immediately and enjoy! As a side note, the extreme temperature plastic bags can handle the hot water- don’t worry. Mine did not melt or breakdown at all. Also, plastic chemicals are said to leech out only in very high, extreme temperatures. Again, check this out for yourself if you are overly concerned but I personally believe through my own research that this method with the freezer bags is nothing to worry about.

Confit

While you can essentially confit any part of the duck you wish, the wings, hinds and innards are the most usual confit fare we see from a duck these days. The reason this is so is because in modern society we don’t need to store meat this way anymore to keep it fresh and for that reason the breast meat is usually not made into confit because it is already considered a trophy just the way it is. It is wonderful to confit tougher or lesser parts of meat because the slow-cooking process makes tough meat soft and the fat makes any kind of meat taste delicious! The word “confit” originates from a French word meaning “to conserve”. This method of preparation happens to be one of the oldest ways to preserve meat that there is. The original idea was the fat the meat is stored in, after the water has evaporated away from cooking the meat while in the fat, creates a hermetic seal around the meat, enabling it to be stored (without refrigeration even!) for many months. Of course today, why would you risk your health when you have a perfectly good refrigerator to use for storage and preservation- but the luscious taste of confited meat still remains a huge draw for the more than obvious reasons of taste and texture.

To begin the process, salt and season your duck pieces and marinate them for at least 24 hours. I chose a marinade composed of salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, and shallots. Unlike some marinades, this recipes calls for you to wipe off any excess marinade before submerging the pieces into the fat. It needs a chance to sink in, and the salt helps remove moisture. While you’re waiting, make sure you have plenty of duck fat on hand. You will need enough to just cover the duck in whichever oven pan you are using. If you end up falling short, you can add some olive oil to the mix, but I believe it will turn out much better with all duck fat. A word to the wise, use a dish that is somewhat cramped to cook the meat in. You don’t want the meat to be hard-pressed against each other, but a snug fit will lessen your duck fat needs while still cooking well.

When your marinade is done, set the oven for about 95°C (or 200°F) and proceed to melt the fat in the pan while you wipe off the excess marinade from the duck. Submerge the pieces into the fat and put it in the oven. Set a timer for 1 hour and when it goes off check on it. Flip the pieces around, add some more fat or olive oil if it looks like it needs it, and set the timer for another hour. Again check and flip when it goes off and set it again for one more hour. Depending on how many pieces you’re cooking, it could be done by now. I cooked mine for about this long and I had 4 pieces – 2 whole wings and 2 thighs. One trick to tell if it’s done is how tender the meat is. Grasp hold of one of the bones sticking out and give it a wiggle. If it feels like the meat could detach from the bone easily, it is done. This cooking method literally makes the meat fall-off-the-bone tender.

If you want to store the meat at this point, find a good container with a tight lid and stick the meat inside of it. Pour the confit fat on top until it completely covers the meat and let it cool a bit before you seal the lid on. Put in your refrigerator and store it there (in my opinion) for up to a month. Again, the idea is to not test your health. When you want to use the meat, simply heat it up in a hot pan with some olive oil or duck fat to brown, or pop it in the oven to crisp, or just add it to your particular dish. It’s already cooked through, so there’s no wrong answer. Whatever you do it’ll taste great!

For the fat-conscientious worry warts out there, cooking a fatty piece of duck in even more fat may sound too decadent to be digested by the human stomach… but interestingly enough this process draws out more fat from the skins on the duck instead of adding to it! To illustrate, imagine you’re cooking a piece of duck and you pour off the fat from the pan midway through. The duck fat still attached to the duck will sear much more quickly and thus trap in the remaining fat instead of staying porous and allowing more layers of fat to come off. If the fat were still in the pan, the sear would not have occurred and more liquid fat would have melted off from the subcutaneous layers of fat attached to the duck meat. Leave your reservations aside and give it a try- you have no reason to worry about the excess animal fat and even if you can’t help yourself from worrying you’ll stop it once you taste the ducky decadence of confit.

Braising

You can braise anything and everything on a duck. Braising, technically, is when the meat is cut into larger hunks and is only partially covered by liquid then cooked at a lower temperature, as opposed to stewing where the meat is in smaller pieces and is completely covered, or boiling where the item is covered with liquid and cooked at a very high heat. Braising is definitely a good and tasty method for dealing with duck. While you can braise the whole duck, I believe there are better things that can be done with the breasts. As far as the wings and hinds are concerned though, go ahead and braise them.

Start by getting a big pot out or your slow cooker. I have a Crockpot and love using it for tough cuts of meat and poultry dishes. The liquid you’re cooking with can never come to a boil, so keep the heat low at all times (like 95°C (or 200°F) for the oven and medium low or low heat for the stove). This cooking method is great because it’s not hands on after it starts cooking; at the same time, though, braising does take a few hours to finish. The liquid can be wine, stock, water – really anything you wish. You can even choose to add in different vegetables to go with the duck and make it a one-pot meal. I would put some chopped carrots in, some onions, maybe mushrooms, sliced potatoes… chopped Brussels sprouts would taste amazing too.

Before you put your duck meat in, be sure to brown the meat in a pan a bit first with some fat. After it’s done, add a little of your cooking liquid to the skillet and deglaze your pan, then add this to your braising pot for more flavor. Slow cook the meat, covered, for about 2 hours. Again, this depends on the amount of meat and the size of your pot and your cooking method (oven, stovetop or Crockpot), but the general idea is to not boil or rush the meat. This method in a way is similar to confit, however it does not remove the moisture to achieve preservation and it slow cooks the meat without the excess fat. I would say braising gives a dish more of a soup quality. If duck soup sounds good to you, then definitely give this a try.

… and the rest

In the next article, we will explore ways to use and cook the giblets, heart and liver of a duck.