Roast wild duck, special blue-green, stuffed with rosemary, onions, apples, cloves, with a sauce of gravy, dry sherry and cream.
Did you know that the only way to get hold of wild ducks in this country is to shoot them yourself or have extraordinarily generous hunter friends who share their kills?
It’s the law. Certain migratory birds can be hunted during the season but cannot be sold.
What follows is a loose recipe and some hints on how to cook wild duck, for my own benefit to remember next time, as well as for anyone else out there who may have the opportunity to cook wild duck.
For anyone who happens to be experienced duck hunters, feel free to share cooking suggestions in the comments.
Wild duck is best cooked and rarely eaten
The first thing to note is that wild ducks aren’t like chickens or turkeys, which you have to cook until you can’t see pink anymore. Wild duck is best eaten Rarely.
Properly cooked the juices will run red, not clear, more like a nice juicy red steak. The flesh itself is a deep garnet red.
If you cook wild duck for too long, it tastes like liver
The taste of wild duck depends a lot on where that duck has eaten. According to Joy of Cooking, shallowwater ducks, which feed on native grains such as mallard, whistle and teal, can be very succulent, while diving ducks feed on fish, which affects their taste.
Wild ducks have more flavor than domestic ducks
Wild ducks are much tastier than domestic ducks because their muscles are constantly exercised, which is why their meat is so red. The taste is more steak than chicken.
I experimented with two recipes, one with rosemary in the cavity and a sherry cream sauce and the other with orange zest in the cavity and an orange juice reduction sauce. We all agreed that the rosemary recipe was great and the orange recipe wasn’t worth repeating.
So here’s the recipe we liked, note that there are no set amounts, this recipe is more of a loose guideline than anything else.
Roast wild duck (teal)
ingredients
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Wild (non-domesticated) whole duck(s), stuffed (gutted, head and feet removed, feathers plucked clean, shot and all bruising removed)
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Extra virgin olive oil
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Coarse salt
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rosemary
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Onion
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Apple
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Whole cloves
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Dry sherry
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cream
method
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Preheat the oven and fill the duck:
Preheat oven to 450°F. Examine the duck to see if there are any needle feathers left, if so remove them.
Rinse the duck with water. Pat dry thoroughly with kitchen paper.
Lightly stuff the duck inside with a sprig of rosemary, a slice of apple with a few cloves to keep it in place, and a small wedge of onion.
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Coat the duck inside and out with olive oil. Sprinkle the duck on all sides with coarse salt.
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Roast the duck breast side up:
Place the duck breasts on a roasting rack in a roasting pan. Place on middle rack of oven at 450°F. Immediately lower the heat to 425°F.
Cooking times depend on the variety of duck. Blue-green ducks typically weigh less than a pound and cook in 10-15 minutes. According to Joy of Cooking, a mallard can take up to 25 minutes to cook. Our duck was perfectly done in 13 minutes. Another duck we cooked for 17 minutes was a little overdone.
Meat thermometers are often not very useful with small chickens because there isn’t enough meat to stick the thermometer in. But if you have an instant-read thermometer and are good at reading, my buddy Hank suggests cooking until the duck reaches an internal temperature of 135F. If you make a mistake on the rare and underdone side, you can always put the bird back in the oven for a few minutes if it’s not done enough.
If you’re not using a meat thermometer, you can test by removing the bird from the oven and slicing off part of it with the tip of a sharp knife. Note that the juice will turn RED and the flesh will be quite red. You want the meat to be rare (wild duck only); it should look like a rare (not raw) steak. The more the meat is cooked past the rare stage, the more “livriger” or wilder it will taste.
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Let rest:
Remove the duck from the oven and let rest breast-side down on a separate rack or plate for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the filling from the cavity before serving.
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Make gravy with the gravy:
While the duck is resting, drain off the excess fat as it drips in the skillet (save that wonderful fat for another recipe).
Place the roasting pan on the stove, heat to medium-high and deglaze with a little dry sherry or white wine.
Scrape off the browned pieces with a metal spatula. Use a metal whisk to further break up the pieces into the wine.
Reduce and then add some cream (and a few juniper berries if you want an extra touch). Pour into a serving bowl or small bowl of sauce.
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Surcharge:
Serve ducks with wild rice and sauce. Teal ducks are disposable ducks.
Note that you can get an excellent broth from the duck carcass. Place the duck carcasses in a saucepan, cover with 1 inch of cold water, bring to a simmer, reduce heat to just barely a bubble, simmer covered and cook for 3 hours. Then strain the broth into a glass jar, cool to room temperature and put in the fridge. For recipes, use the duck broth instead of the chicken broth.
Thank you to Hank from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook and Holly from NorCal Cazadora for the wonderful and delicious gift of these ducks.
Links:
Roast Wild Duck by Hank Shaw
