I’ve come upon a miracle fat-loss plan – if you happen to be a duck.
Check out these chubby little guys before they went into the oven on Thanksgiving morning:
And note the difference after several hours of roasting on low heat. The top guy has a waist, and you can see muscle definition in the drumsticks, too:
You can also see my gravy separator at the upper left. I am not completely sure how much total fat the ducks shed. Our host used some to fry potatoes, and I left her at least a cup for future cooking projects. I also added a little to the cherry-Port sauce. My husband and I still brought home well over 1 1/2 cups of delicious, mostly monounsaturated duck fat. It’s liquid even at winter room temperatures, and it’s less solid than olive oil in the fridge. (It looks opaque but moves around when you swirl the jar.)
The two classic uses for duck fat are frying potatoes and spreading on bread in place of butter, but I won’t be doing either of those. We discovered Sunday morning that it’s really delicious for cooking omelettes, and mushrooms seem to be made for duck fat. I’m thinking it could be used to braise cabbage, too.
Migraine aura picture from 
Daffy ain’t gonna’ be happy about all this roasted duck talk!
Ron the Former Donut Junkie
Comment by formerdonutjunkie — November 26, 2007 @ 2:05 pm |
They sure do look pretty!! Duck is on the menu for Christmas in my house!
Comment by Cindy moore — November 26, 2007 @ 4:19 pm |
Oh my god, they do look outstanding! When you say several hours on low heat, is that 3 hours or 8 hours? Around 300 degrees, or lower?
Forgive me if you’ve listed this elsewhere
Comment by Bix — November 27, 2007 @ 8:08 am |
Hi, Bix,
I have two different recipes – you can roast them at 250 for 5 or 6 hours, or you can start them at 300 for two and a half or three hours. Either way, you can turn the heat up for a half hour at the end to get nice brown skin. (I did that on Thanksgiving because something else needed a half hour at 450. Roasting is a pretty forgiving cooking method!)
Either way, you should prick the skin all over with the tip of a very sharp knife so the fat will ooze out more readily. Some recipes also suggest pouring a cup or two of boiling water over the skin right before roasting. This serves two purposes – it tightens the skin, so more fat gets squeezed out, and it keeps the first drippings from burning to the bottom of the pan.
Comment by psipsina — November 27, 2007 @ 10:55 am |
I really appreciate this. Thank you. I’m contemplating duck for the Holidays (I rarely stray from chicken or turkey) and was wondering how low I could go. I think I may try the 250 and turn it up at the end.
Comment by Bix — November 27, 2007 @ 3:34 pm |
I cooked my turkey this way this year, too, with lower heat and longer cooking time. I had a bigger than usual bird (20 pounds) and I wanted it to cook evenly and not dry out the breast. I brined overnight and started breast side down and turned it over after two hours, a la Cooks Illustrated large bird technique. My Tom turkey came from a local “backyard” farm in my county, a first for me.
I would love to roast duck; my husband would be in absolute heaven. I’ll have to look into a good source, local if possible. My German friend would definitely want the fat (schmaltz). She loved the rendered chicken fat I gave her but said rendered duck and goose fat is prized in Germany and never discarded.
Comment by Anna — December 1, 2007 @ 4:26 am |