Smoked Ducky, You're So Fine

[tekobo]

And I'm lucky that you're mine!  

I was looking for a good recipe for Easter lunch and came across five different recipes in my books for tea smoked duck.  The trad method required a 6 hour marinade, followed by a  6 hour air-dry, then 30 minutes smoking over tea leaves, then steaming for about an hour before leaving to cool prior to a deep frying the whole or half duck, depending on your capacity!  In spite of my love of deep frying I didn't have the capacity or the inclination to be frying half a duck while my guests hung around so I opted for the Pitt Cue Co adaptation.

Brined the birds in a tea brine overnight.  I quadrupled these quantities for two birds:  1.5 litres water, 50g tea leaves, 2.5cm ginger, 1 bulb of garlic (just used one), 2 star anise, 100ml soy sauce, 60ml honey and 50g smoked Maldon salt.  

They only called for one hour of air drying but that just didn't seem like enough so Mr and Mrs Ducky got a blow dry for about 8 minutes each.  

 

This great Chinese implement is used to puncture pork skin to make it easier for the fat to leach out and become wonderfully crispy.  I figured it couldn't do any harm with a duck so I used it, more gently, on these two. 

Rubbed with a home made rub, again from the Pitt Cue Co book, 100g Maldon sea salt, 38g maple sugar, 12g black peppercorns, 5 g toasted fennel seeds, 5g star anise, 5g stick cinnamon and zest of half an orange all blitzed in a blender.  Then onto the KK to smoke over cherry for about an hour and a half at 170C (ish) until internal temp got to 78C.  The drip tray was essential and I added a bit of water periodically to reduce the duck fat smoke.  

Finger licking good with a gravy made with chicken stock, duck giblets and finished with the pieces of foie gras that were too small to fry.  Not the same as the traditional tea smoking but very good nonetheless.  

 

I am not really into dessert but we had some Maraschino cherries to get rid of so I looked up a clafoutis recipe.  This one https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/basic-clafoutis-51208430 was nice and simple and recommended using a cast iron pan.  it was perfect for a KK and they tasted great.  A lot of similarity with Yorkshire puddings and I will definitely try this again soon.

[tony b]

Stunning duck cook, @wilburpan would be envious! Short-cuts or not! 

That Chinese implement looks medieval! Looks more like a self-defense weapon than a cooking implement! 

I love clafoutis! Cherries and duck - match made in heaven! 

[Tucker]

Glad my wife does not look on this forum.  she loves duck - and this would pre-empt our visit to a newly opened chop house next weekend.

but, man does that look good - nice job - diggin on the 'tenderizer'

I will be back for this one

[Bruce Pearson]

Those ducks look delicious and the sweets look very tasty also, nice cook.

[tekobo]

Thanks all.  I did look up @wilburpan and @tony b's posts about duck and saw that you worked hard for your great results.  i worked a little less hard to make more time for dessert and drinking adult beverages. 

I am still not keen on trying to fry a whole/half bird in a wok or deep fat fryer.  May adapt the standard recipe to tea smoke early on in the KK, steam in IDK and then finish in the KK at a high heat.  

The Chinese skin jabby thing is awesome.  If used on pork skin it gives you wonderfully thin, crispy crackling.  Go searching in a Chinese catering store near you.  My first one was given to me by the chef in my local Chinese takeaway and my back up was bought in the Bowery in New York.  

 

[Aussie Ora]

Yum they turned out great love the rub

Outback kamado Bar and Grill

[jonj]

The "Chinese skin jabby thing" appears similar, albeit with longer spines, to a Tip-Pik ("Endorsed By Mr. Billiards!") which is used to refresh the tip of a billiards cue. I've seen pictures of dogs playing billiards, but never ducks. 

[tekobo]

42 minutes ago, jonj said:

The "Chinese skin jabby thing" appears similar, albeit with longer spines, to a Tip-Pik ("Endorsed By Mr. Billiards!") which is used to refresh the tip of a billiards cue. I've seen pictures of dogs playing billiards, but never ducks. 

Tee hee. Maybe the Aussie cricket guys should have used one of those Tip-Piks on their balls.  They could have claimed it was an official performance enhancing tool, as endorsed by Mr B!

[MacKenzie]

Certainly everything looks super delicious and that includes the gravy. Mouthwatering every bite, I'm sure.

BTW that looks like a dangerous weapon and I'm sure it does the job. 

[Shuley]

That looks amazing.  My local butcher carries both whole duck and duck breasts..... I sense a hankering coming on. 

[tony b]

Go for it, Shuley! Can't wait to see the pics. 

I'll go searching for one of those Chinese picks. Definitely will come in handy on a number of cooks. 

@tekobo - don't think for a minute that all that prep work on the Peking ducks got in the way of having an adult beverage (or 3!)