Les Jones

Food & Drink > More Than One Way to Cook a Duck

I like duck, and so for the past few years I've been cooking one for Thanksgiving. We had a turkey day at work this afternoon, and I signed up to bring the duck.

There are some amazing recipes online. (Like this one from the Naked Chef.) Thing is, I wouldn't be home to cook. I had to shove the bird in the oven and go to work, and Melissa would bring it just in time so it would be hot and fresh. Most of the recipes I found were too fussy for that.

Instead, I used this easy recipe. Rinse the duck and place in an oven bag. Combine all of the other ingredients in a blender, mix, and pour into the bag. Place the bag in a pan and cook for 2 hours at 350 degrees. Easy squeezy.

1 duck, skin removed
1 package brown gravy mix
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
1 cup hot water
2 tbsp.orange marmalade
1 6 oz. can frozen orange juice, thawed

The recipe was a hit. The meat is tender and falls off the bone, and the orange flavor masks the gaminess that some people don't like in duck. The one thing I would do differently would be to remove the skin before cooking, so that's the one change I made from the original recipe.

SATURDAY UPDATE: BTW, we also deep fried a duck along with the turkeys. I can't say I'd do it again. It was sort of tough. I have some leftovers from the fried duck that I'm going to make into czarnina (Polish duck soup) this afternoon. Only where the directions say "Put vinegar into glass or crockery bowl (not metal) and into this catch the blood when killing the duck or goose and stir to avoid coagulation. Fresh pigs blood may also be used." I'm going to substitute "leftover fried duck."