Greetings everyone! I’ve been in love with duck breast ever since I tried it at our local Asian restaurant. They serve dry-aged duck with a sauce (chicken jus, caramel, red wine), pickled spicy cucumbers, and mashed potatoes with ginger and lemongrass butter. I’ve always wanted to make it myself, but it feels like too much work just to feed only me. That’s why I need your help reviewing my current recipe and helping me improve it. I don’t know much about duck meatб you can consider me a noob 🙂
Preparations before cooking:
- I cut off any excess fat; sometimes there’s extra meat on the breasts that I also trim (and just cook separately in a pan).
- I remove any excess moisture with paper towels, then season both sides with salt and black pepper.
- I usually leave the cut at least overnight, or even for a full day in the fridge. This helps draw out extra moisture and lets the salt penetrate deeper into the meat.
- Before cooking, I let the meat rest outside the fridge for about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, I score the fat side with diagonal cuts, making sure not to cut all the way into the meat.
Cooking:
- I place the meat fat-side down in a cold pan, then turn the heat to max. No oil or butter.
- I don’t use a timer, I just watch for a golden crust (without lifting or moving the meat too much).
- Once the fat side is golden enough, I flip it and cook the meat side until it’s golden as well.
- After both sides are seared, I flip it back to the fat side and put the pan into a preheated oven at 180 °C / 356 °F for about 3:40-4:00 minutes (I cover the pan with foil to avoid grease splatters).
- When the timer goes off, I take the pan out of the oven and place the duck breasts on chopsticks set over my wooden cutting board. I let them rest for about 4-5 minutes.
- After resting, I slice the meat (still not sure which side to cut is the best) and serve it with demi-glace sauce.
What are y’all’s thoughts on my recipe? How can I improve my cooking technique?
by AlpacAKEK
5 Comments
Please, cook for me 🤤
That’s my verdict
For your cooking step 1: don’t crank the heat this high, go medium and slowly cook it to 90% temp on the skin side, then go high and sear the meat side. Let it rest for 5-10min and it will be perfect.
Prep- it looks like you’re over trimming the fat/skin. It’s not necessary since you’re rendering it out later. I also don’t like seasoning ahead. Pre-salting tightens the meat so it isn’t as tender at the end. Scoring is completely optional. Someone will comment that it allows the fat to render better. This just isn’t true. I also don’t temper the meat.
Cook- cold pan is good, but render on medium heat. It should never be hot enough to splatter and take about 10min to fully render. As it does, pour off the rendered fat when you get up to like 1/4″, using your off hand to hold the duck in place. The pan should be generally dry while rendering. You’ll know you’re done when you pick up the breast to inspect it and it’s dry instead of shiny, like photo 2.
To finish cooking, I flip the breasts onto a plate, up the heat to medium high, and add 2 knobs of butter to the pan with aromatics, garlic-thyme usually, you can add some bay ginger lemongrass too for your Asian vibe. Once melted and foamy, I tilt the pan toward me to create a pool and drop the duck breast meat side down into the butter for about 45sec to 1min, one at a time. If you took enough time to render, you’ll have a perfectly medium duck breast. Be sure to rest for 3min before slicing. I never use the oven.
Plating- slicing skin side down is fine if you properly rendered. Sauce on plate, duck on sauce. You just spent 15min crisping it, why get it wet?
Cool?
Duck is by far my favourite meat and This is almost exactly how i prep my duck breast.
Things i do differently are:
– Id keep a bit more skin/fat. You can always cut them out later if you dont like the presentation.
I dry age it a bit longer in fridge.
– I eat it a bit more rare than what i think in the picture (deep dark pink in the middle).
– I dont season with pepper because it tends to burn when cooking and give a bitter taste (just coarse sea salt – sometimes if i can be bothered i will marinate it with dark soy sauce or fish sauce mid dry aging to empart a bit more umami and colour but it makes very little difference)
– I also dont put the sauce on the meat but have it on the side. I usually use hoisin sauce or something cherry based. I will make red wine jus with the duck stock if i can be bothered but most of the time i dont. (I usually have duck stock when i cook duck because i always buy a whole duck
– presentation: i slice it a bit more diagonally and put them slightly overlapping each other, like how sashimi or beef tataki is plated
Yum! 🤤