Roasted Duck
(from Coker Family’s recipe box)
Serve this instead of Turkey for Christmas dinner…your family will be impressed.
Source: Linda Coker
Ingredients
- 1 5-7 pound duck
- 1/2 stalk celery, cut in chunks
- 1/2 carrot, cut in chunks
- 2-3 fresh stems of parsley
- 1/4 apple, cored, not peeled
- 1/4 large onion
- 2-3 cloves garlic cut in chunks
- olive oil
- dry rosemary leaves
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 "Brown-n-Bag"
Directions
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TIP: Duck is dark meat, so if you don’t care for dark meat…then just do turkey.
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If you purchase a frozen duck, thaw. Wash the bird well, in and out. Remove neck, gizzards, and heart. Save these to use in either your dressing or your gravy. Most frozen duck comes with a pouch of “Orange Sauce”, discard this pouch, you don’t need it for this and it’s “nasty” anyway. A duck does not serve many people at all…not much meat on one…if you have a large family you might need 2-3 ducks or another meat such as ham.
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Salt and pepper the inside cavity of duck.
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Place the celery, carrot, parsley, apple, onion and garlic in to cavity of the duck.
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Rub outside of duck with olive oil, rosemary leaves and salt and pepper.
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Prepare Brown-n-Bag according to instructions, adding 1/2 cup water to bag and bake duck according to instructions checking internal temp of duck to make sure it is properly cooked.
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Cut a corner of the bag off and drain off all cooking juices, tipping the duck to get juices collected inside cavity. CATCH these juices to make your gravy. Duck is very fat…you will want to skim off some of this fat. (Duck fat is a very desirable fat used in a lot of gourmet recipes.)
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Place the duck back in the oven for another 30 minutes to brown a little more…you might have to remove duck from the bag and place under the broiler to get the skin brown and crispy.
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GRAVY: You can make your gravy using the pan drippings that you collected.
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While your duck was cooking you should have been cooking your necks, giblets, heart, liver in a 3 quart pan of water (using only about 2 quarts of water) seasoned with salt, pepper, celery, onion and carrot.
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Strain out everything from the broth. Discard all but the neck and giblets. (Your dog will love the heart and liver.) Add the pan drippings to the broth taste for salt and pepper. Bring back to a boil.
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In a 1 cup measuring cup put about 1/3 cup cornstarch and fill up with cold tap water, stirring until cornstarch is dissolved. Slowly pour into the boiling broth while whisking. Your broth/gravy should quickly thicken. Bring back to a boil…you have gravy.
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Cut up the meat from the neck (discard skin), and cut up the giblets. Stir into gravy. This gravy heats well in the microwave.