PLUM BRAISED DUCK
Remember the good old days when your parents used to take you to feed the ducks? It's time for the duck to feed you back.
People avoid cooking duck because they have the misconception that it's difficult, and yes, there are plenty of complicated duck recipes out there but, let me show you one that couldn't be easier. All you'll be doing is searing with some soy sauce, adding everything else into the same pot, letting it simmer, and then reducing the sauce. That’s it. People also think duck is super expensive, but this entire duck cost me £9, what can you even get for £9 nowadays? So let's get into it.
Ingredients:
Whole duck
100ml soy sauce
100ml Shaoxing cooking wine
3 spring onions
Zest of 1 orange
A thumb-sized piece of ginger
6 garlic cloves
30 ml sesame oil
2 heaped tbsp plum jam
Tbsp white sugar
500ml water
1-star anise
5 cloves
Spring onion, orange garnish
Serve with pancakes, cucumber, and spring onion
Method:
Step 1: To make the searing process easier, cut the duck in half using the breast bone as a guide. Tip: you can remove the sign-making incisions along either side too.
Step 2: Add the duck into a cold pan and turn it onto medium heat, let that fat render out and the skin crisp up a little (this should take around 10 minutes).
Step 3: Coat the duck in soy sauce and continue to sear till it has a nice colour on all sides. Tip: You want to use a high-sided pan that’ll allow the duck to sit in the braising liquid.
Step 4: Once the duck has a nice sear, you’re gonna add all the other ingredients into the pan. There’s no technique or special order to this and that’s the beauty of it, throw it all in, cover, and let the duck braise for 2 hours on medium/low heat. Tip: Let the Shaoxing wine be the first liquid you pour in and use it to scrape any fond that’s developed at the bottom of that pan.
Step 5: When the time is up, uncover and blast the heat to let the braising liquid reduce right down to a syrupy and glossy consistency.
It should go from looking like this:
To this:
Step 6: All done. I served it with pancakes, cucumber, and spring onion.
The skins not gonna be crispy like it would be in a Peking duck, but this requires a tenth of the effort so it's definitely worth a go.
Watch the full recipe video here:
KITCHEN VIBE 🎶
Today’s song to vibe to in the kitchen is ‘Right My Wrongs’ by Khamari. This one’s on my favourite album of 2023, every song is amazing and he’s quickly becoming one of my favourite artists. He samples ‘Didn’t I’ by Darondo which is a song I already love, and I think he puts his spin on it so well.