Pan Roasted Duck with Swiss Chard
From an original recipe by Alton Brown from his Food Network show, Good Eats, aired December 6, 2001.
I'm hot and cold on Alton Brown who hosted a show on the Food Network, Good Eats, which ran from 1999 to 2012. Like other formats on the Food Network, they don’t seem to evolve over time and after a while, they just become stale and boring. Alton attempted a reprisal of the show with Good Eats: The Return, in 2019 but it was cancelled after 13 episodes, proving my point.
More of a game show host than a chef, Alton’s use of props on Good Eats and embellishment of the chemistry and molecular physics behind cooking eventually got silly. I thought he over-complicated a lot of his recipes because he had to fill up a thirty-minute show devoted entirely to virtually one recipe or a single ingredient.
Honestly, just how long can you talk about broccoli?
I recall once Alton had a show devoted entirely to making a cup of coffee. Alton was telling his viewers that they had to mist water on top of the coffee grounds before pouring over the hot water to break the surface tension. That episode is when I think Good Eats “jumped the shark,” as they say in television business parlance.
But this is my problem with the Food Network; for an entertainment enterprise that owes its very existence to trail-blazers like Julia Child, they seem to be all about the personality of the chef, whereas Julia was all about the food. She was genuinely passionate about presenting classic French recipes to her her viewers and she didn’t ham it up or pander to the camera. She seemed anything but narcissistic.
That’s not the kind of programming Food Network presents, and perhaps I should write that in past tense. The Food Network has become now more a game show network than anything else. Alton was occasionally entertaining, but he never inspired me with his recipes.
This one, however, would be the sole exception.
I love duck, but who makes it anymore besides a few Chinese restaurants? Very few. And unless you have a vibrant China Town in your city, you don't see fresh duck, either. If you can find it at all, it’s tucked away in the frozen food section of your neighborhood grocer, practically stuck in cryogenic freeze; a kind of frozen, plastic-wrapped football with the specific gravity of iron ore.
What to do with such an item, and how to prepare it?
Well, this recipe of Alton's is the perfect way to prepare duck. Although it has many steps, true to form for any Alton Brown recipe, they are relatively simple steps to execute, with the possible exception breaking down the duck before you cook it. Now that I've made this recipe multiple times, it's not at all as difficult as I first thought, and I’m reminded that as a child I watched my dad break down a chicken before cooking it, back in the days when you could only buy fresh chicken one way: whole.
The treat is worth the effort. There are many resources and videos available on the Internet that provide tutorials in how to break down a duck into its four edible parts of the hindquarters and the breasts, so I won’t reinvent the wheel. Just search “how to break down a whole duck,” and you’ll easily find dozens of videos that show you how. I do, however, provide a set of instructions in my recipe below.
And to my earlier point, since you’re more likely than not to find your duck frozen, there are two ways to thaw it and neither of them is to use the thawing feature on your microwave. Don’t do that. Instead, place the bird in your fridge for 48 hours. If you don’t have that kind of time, the next safest way to thaw a frozen duck is to put it (packaging and all) in a large zip lock plastic bag, and submerge it in a cold water bath in your kitchen sink. Change the water every 30 minutes. It will take 3-5 hours to fully thaw a 4-6 pound duck.
Pan Roasted Duck with Swiss Chard
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup kosher salt
- 1 quart pineapple orange juice (like, Dole or Tropicana)
- 15 whole black peppercorns
- 1 bunch fresh thyme
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 ~ 6 lb frozen Long Island duck, thawed
- 2 cup Swiss chard, washed and chopped
- 2 shallots, finely minced
- 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
Instructions
- Remove the pop-up thermometer if there is one, and take out any parts in the cavity of the duck and discard. Using a sharp de-boning knife, cut off the wings at the joint where they meet the body of the duck. Discard the wings.
- Place the duck breast side down and locate the backbone. Using the poultry shears, cut up the line of the backbone from the rear cavity of the duck toward the neck cavity.
- Turn the duck 90 degrees and with poultry shears cut the other side of the backbone from the neck cavity towards the rear cavity. Remove and discard the backbone.
- Turn the duck breast side up and using poultry shears, cut straight down the middle of the breast bone, leaving 2 equal duck halves.
- To separate the legs from the breast, flip your halves over so the flesh side is facing up at you. Using the de-boning knife, make a crescent shape cut between the leg and the breast. Find the joint and separate the pieces.
- Do the same on the opposite side. You have now separated the hind quarters from the breasts.
- Trim out the breast bone from the two breast pieces. Cut away any excess skin or fat from the top and bottom of each breast piece.
- Discard the remaining carcass.
- Mix all the ingredients for the brine and pour into a large zip lock bag.
- Seal the bag, ensuring all air is removed and the brine is fully in contact with the duck.
- Place the zip lock bag in a mixing bowl that will help keep the liquid in contact with the duck, and also to catch any leaks.
- Brine the duck for three hours in the fridge.
- Remove the duck pieces from the brine and pat dry. Discard the brine.
- Bring 2 inches of water to a boil in a large pot that will accommodate your colander on its top.
- Place the duck pieces upright around the perimeter of the colander. Do not stack them.
- Cover turn the heat to medium low.
- Steam the duck for 45 minutes.
- Set your oven to 475°F.
- Place a large cast iron skillet in the oven.
- Remove duck pieces from the colander and place leg hindquarters, skin side down, into the hot skillet, first.
- Place the skillet back into the oven and cook the leg quarters for 10 minutes.
- Remove the skillet and add the breasts, skin side down.
- Return the skillet to the oven and cook for 7 more minutes or until the duck takes on a deep mahogany color and the skin is very crisp.
- Remove the duck from the skillet to a warm platter and allow to rest, covered with aluminum foil.
- Add the chard and the shallots to the skillet. The carry over heat from the skillet will cook them.
- Toss the chard in the fat until it barely wilts. Season with the sherry vinegar.
- Serve the duck with the chard.
Notes
- Some tutorials in breaking down a duck will use simply a de-boning knife; others will also use poultry shears, Kitchen Tapestry's recommendation. Buy a good sturdy pair like the Oxo brand.
