how to grill duck

Ducks have a reputation for being picky and I blame the French. illness French (how to prepare and cook duck). All the talk of cutting off the breast and legs and cooking each one separately, The breast is carefully cooked to perfect medium rare and the leg is confit buried in even more duck fat that must be sourced from the duck.MeIt’s enough to postpone cooking the bird for one, but it doesn’t have to be this (French) way. You can toss a whole duck directly on the grill, but there’s little you can do to keep it from tasting bad.

I’m not the only one sick of French (duck recipe).in her Articles for New Yorkersfood writer Helen Rosner, also questions our frankophilic, two-hour, one-bird obsession.

A rare breast with well-built legs is a very French way of thinking about duck. As in the culinary world, the French way of thinking is otherwise. bad, but it’s so large that it tends to leave very little oxygen for other things.is duck in portuguese Arros de PatoA crunchy little piece of Thai salad? The delicate mauve interior of a French-style cooked breast is certainly beautiful, but too many cooks are clearly afraid to cross the line to medium or (God forbid) medium well. Because the skin is not perfectly crispy, the bird’s glorious subcutaneous lipid layer remains uncomfortably ragged instead of rendering it silky. Is it?

Rosner makes a good point. Why should you stick to loud French when you can be cool, calm and comfortable (and anything but French)? Next, Rosner goes on to offer a recipe for slow-roasted duck for his casual yet fancy dinner parties.

Of course we did.A charcoal grill is essentially an oven that gets its heat from coal, and I’ve had great success with it. roast the chicken slowly with it in the past. But unlike most of my efforts, I didn’t feel like making my beloved Charcoal Snake. It was to “stick” to human ancestry (well, Acadian ancestry), but for the most part pushed the boundaries of how loosely a duck could be prepared.

My first attempt was very sloppy and not successful. I piled a lot of hot coals on one side of the grill, put the (dried and salted) duck on the other side, closed the lid and watched the grill get completely too hot. Close the vent to a mere sliver. I wish I could say I got the temperature under control, but it was a chaotic day full of idiots, so the temperature fluctuated wildly during cooking and never stabilized around the 200°F I was aiming for. was. The meat itself he hit 200°F in one place. It all worked!

In the end I got a very edible and pretty juicy duck. Some parts of the breast were a little dry, but 80% of the breast was incredibly juicy, especially when eaten with the silky layers of melting fat and crispy skin. Even the dry part was soft and delicious.

But beyond a very tasty bird – one that I would be proud of if anyone else was around – the real prize is that I become a complete duck and end up with an impressive and delicious main courseMore This is due to the very fatty nature of birds. Its curse (a thick layer of subcutaneous fat that takes forever to render) is also its blessing (you can “overcook” a bird and it still tastes good). ).

When my fridge broke, I was ready to take it all on and perfect my imperfect ways. Fixing it under my protection plan was infinitely frustrating. The parts he needed didn’t arrive and Home Depot gave him some cash, but that was after he worked for two months on the mini fridge.

It didn’t really matter. A long break between ducks didn’t ruin the process because the recipe wasn’t too complicated to begin with. This was great news. Again, because I wanted a duck recipe that even the most absent-minded and distracted of us (me) could do.

That’s the recipe I wanted and that’s the recipe I got. It requires two ingredients, duck and salt, and can be cooked on a charcoal grill without any special equipment, except for a dual-probe thermometer to check the temperature of the grill and the meat (either way. must be provided). ). Juicy, succulent and fatty with just the right amount of fat. It’s decadent and visceral, best consumed prepared, with little glitz and circumstance, preferably with your own hands. watching a movie) is how I ate it. (My boyfriend has since called it a “hand duck” and has requested it be part of his regular rotation.)

Easy Charcoal Roasted Duck (aka Hand Duck)

material:

• 1 duck, head and tail removed
• kosher salt

Trim off excess fat and skin (loose floppy bits) from duck.save the fat rendering skins with crispySprinkle the duck inside and out with salt. I used 5 3-finger pinches of kosher salt to create a shimmery but uncrusted layer of salt on top of the bird. Let the brine dry for at least 24 hours, preferably 48 hours.

Once the duck is salted, pierce it all over with a very pointed, sharp object or make a diagonal slit in the skin over the breast, being careful not to slice into the meat.

Place a probe thermometer on the duck side of the grill. Get a large charcoal chimney lit with lots of coal. When the coal on the top starts to ash at the edges, dump it on the non-duck side of the grill, close the lid, and adjust the vents so there is very little air flow. It means the mouth is about a quarter open and the top vent is slightly open. Allow the temperature to drop steadily. When it’s 350 degrees Fahrenheit, put on your duck.Continue lowering the temperature until it stabilizes at some point between 200 degrees Fahrenheit and 300 degrees Fahrenheit, Adjust the vents as needed to keep them within that range (more airflow means a hotter grill). Don’t try to be overly precise. It doesn’t really matter.

Cook the duck for 1 hour, then flip it so that it is breast side down. Cook 30 minutes, then flip again, and continue cooking and flipping 30 minutes until breasts reach an internal temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove from the grill and let rest until cool enough to touch, then devour with your hands if possible.