hi there it's Christmas Day of 2017 and
here we have a special dish I've made a
few times on Christmas and that's a
roast duck now I haven't yet had the
courage or the time to take on a full
Peking Duck recipe but this simple
recipe for roast duck has worked well
and I like how it turned out with roast
duck the things you really want or a
good skin and you want to reserve as
much of the fat as possible
duck produces far more fat and grease
than other poultry and this duck fat is
pure gold when it comes to cooking and
especially you want to avoid that heavy
gamy taste that makes a lot of people
shy away from roast duck well much of
the reason why that heavy taste happens
is because the meat is overcooked
duck is a game bird not raised on farms
by chicken or turkey and so it has a lot
more muscle and dark meat but even
though people seem to think roast duck
is a hard dish to do it's really not so
hard when you just use some temperature
control
the night before we start out by patting
the duck dry with paper towels many
oriental restaurants had their ducks
hanging in the window and this is done
to help dry out the skin that's why here
we're letting the duck rest uncovered in
the refrigerator overnight
the next day we prepare a glaze for the
duck with only kosher salt ground white
pepper and honey mixed together that's
all we need to do and now we get to
bring out the cast iron the duck is
small enough to fit into a regular-sized
skillet and we then punctured the skin
along the thigh to help the fat drain
out as it roasts now all we do is coat
the skin with our honey glaze
from there we rub salt and pepper into
the cavity most importantly we insert a
probe thermometer into the breast meat
and this happened to be my most awkward
scene of placing the pan into the oven
because the cord from the thermometer
caught on the door but now all we had to
do was wait for the temperature alarm
the reason why we set the temperature so
low was because we're not done roasting
yet we let the duck rest and cover it
with foil
while we raise the oven temperature to
400 degrees this will help get the skin
nice and crisp meanwhile we reserved the
duck fat into a metal bowl and back into
the hot oven it goes
there is a big difference between the
duck now and before its second trip in
the oven what's more that short 20
minutes produced a lot more duck fat
now we strain the precious duck fat and
keep it in the refrigerator for a future
cooking and with that it's time to serve
our roast duck this duck is bursting
with juices because we roasted it at a
low temperature and didn't overcook it
and in case you're concern that it's
undercooked our thermometer shows the
breast meat is just under 165 while the
dark meat is over 175 that's why a cast
iron pan is the best poultry roasting
pan in the world because in only 2 hours
we have our Christmas dinner of roast
duck when cooking this manner I'll agree
this duck is a little tougher and less
tender than chicken or turkey but that's
because duck is a game bird and it has a
lot more muscle than a farm-raised
chicken or turkey but this duck
definitely does not taste like chicken
it has its own flavor one that is quite
enjoyable and best of all it does not
have that gamy taste that we all dread I
won't have any trouble at all finishing
this and as a bonus there is at least
half a cup of duck fat to use with
cooking and in their future that you
might even say makes this an extra
Christmas present on its own I hope
you've enjoyed this and thank you for
watching