So I’m reading this post over at Blue Kitchen and as I was salivating over the duck fat roasted potatoes, I decided that I was going to have to have some. And since the pictures weren’t edible, I was going to have to make them myself. First, obtain duck fat! Well, of course, it isn’t to be found in the super market. I logged to Amazon.com and found a jar. Yeah, $14 for 8 ounces! Please! Of course there was a better way. Cook a duck. I mean, I like duck. I pan roast breasts all the time. How hard could roasting a whole duck be right?

Well…

I had to do some research. I bought the duck from Whole Foods. My WF only carries Pekin duck. So that’s what I went with. During my research, I found a lot of head spinning, confusing, methodologies and opinions about roasting a duck. Then, despite my initial optimism, I began to feel a bit intimidated. Some roast high and fast, some boil the duck first, some pour boiling water over the duck to tighten the skin, some will not roast a whole duck, they cut it up into parts and find uses for it that way. Some say the best way to roast a whole duck at home it to not. Some say to roast the dusk until the breast are done, then serve them, and return the duck to the oven for the legs to finish. Are you getting all of this? All I want is to get some duck fat, and in the process, have duck! This was becoming information overload.

I settled down, had some wine, and decided to think about it. It’s a bird that needs to roast for a while. It is full of good fat, but fat nonetheless. People burn up the home roasting them. (don’t fact check me on that) So I concluded that I would use a low temperature and slow roast it. The thought of rendering fat at 400+ degrees sorta makes me uneasy.

Well, my method was a success. My oven immediately need cleaning when it was all said and done though. It sounded like mortar rounds exploding every now and then in the oven as the coveted fat was rendering. Next time, I will periodically siphon out the fat during the roasting process. At one point I opened the oven and POW! Fat at-cha. Despite the fat combat zone, this duck yielded me almost 13 ounces of fat!

I also used my convection roast option. I read that convection would dry the bird out. It did no such thing. After about 2 1/2 hours, I had crispy skin and juicy duck. Oh and that broccoli you see in the picture is Francois’ Sicilian Drowned Broccoli from FX Cuisine. It was delicious as well; I highly recommend it.

Follow up:

There really isn’t a recipe per se. I prepped the duck, roasted the duck, and ate the duck. And liked it!

To prep the duck, I washed it and pat it dry. Using a fork, I pricked the duck all over through the skin just to the layer of fat, not all the way to the meat. This allows the fat to render out. I kept the fork sort of parallel to the duck as I stuck it. Then I cut off the execess fat from the cavity and neck areas. Then I rendered the removed fat pieces. They gave some nice fat, too; crisped up like cracklins.

I rubbed the bird down in olive oil.

Into the cavity went salt, pepper, 2 sprigs rosemary, 3 sprigs thyme, and one blood orange.

Then all over the exterior of the bird went generous amounts of salt and pepper.

The bird was trussed…



…and into a 325 degree-f oven it went.

When it emerged we destroyed it!