This slow roast duck features very tender meat, super crispy skin (just like confit), and a sumptuous olive sauce. It will take quite some time and effort to cook, but it’ll definitely be a highlight on your dinner party’s menu. Thomas and I both love duck, and we have been doing search and studying, trying to roast whole duck at home to create a satisfying result. Just like roasting a perfect chicken, our goal is to create a moist and tender duck with crispy skin. Cooking with a whole duck requires a whole different sets of techniques and seasonings. Neither of us had much experience on the topic, so we decided to do a series of experiments, learning from cookbooks before starting our own creation.
This is a recipe from The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen by Paula Wolfert. The original name is Slow-Cooked Duck with Olives. I made very few changes and followed the recipe loyally throughout cooking, and the dish turned out wonderful. This is a dish I recommend for the holiday season or a formal dinner party. Thomas and I both love the texture and flavor of the finished duck. It is just like duck confit, with juicy meat and very crispy skin. Most of the fat will be rendered during cooking, so the skin will be paper-thin in the end. The olive sauce is gold, too. It adds great depth to the dish. We served the dish with roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, which are simply addictive with a bit of olive sauce drizzled on them. The author describes this dish as a “quick” version of duck confit. However, to prep and cook this dish, you need at least a half day (the active cooking time will be about 1 hour).
But the great part is that you can finish most of the process a day, or even a few days, before serving. On the day of serving, you can simply prepare some salad and roasted veggies. You need just 15 minutes or so to crisp the duck and reheat the sauce, and you’ll have a perfect main dish with sides. The cooking process is long, but actually simple and straightforward, unlike stir-fry, which I cook almost every day and still occasionally screw up within a timeframe of one minute. The only tricky part might be halving the duck, if you’ve never done it before. You can refer to this YouTube video to learn how (it’s a video on how to halve a chicken, but the idea is the same). In fact, because the bones of a young duck are not very tough, you can easily achieve it with a chef’s knife – no cleaver needed. I hope you enjoy the recipe!
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