serinde

We got a whole duck from the duck farmers (yes) at the greenmarket today; and although doing Julia's standard recipe has always worked tolerably well, for some reason[1] I was seized with the idea of Doing Better. This led me to a Chowhound thread on the "five-hour duck", which is low-and-slow for four hours and then turn it up to 350 for the last hour. This is supposed to give you the perfect union of moist, not overcooked meat, and crispy skin. Sure, why not? since I had the time and all.

1. Take your 5-lb domestic duck (I actually spelled that as "domestick". O_o), rinse it & pat it dry, and rub it inside & out with salt and pepper.
2. Score the breast skin & fat generously (don't score the flesh!!); put it breast-side up rack in a roasting pan just big enough for it.
3. Place it in a 250-degree oven.
4. After 1 hour, take the pan out of the oven. Pour off and reserve accumulated fat, because you're not crazy. Stab the duck (again, just through the skin and fat) all over on top. Flip it over, stab it on that side too. Pay special attention to the area under armpit. Put it back in the oven.
5. GOTO 4 until four hours have passed.

Now, at the end of hour 3, it was completely done (and more so) according to the thermometer. I dithered, and compromised by turning the oven up to 400 and putting it back in for...I think it was about 20 minutes; I'm not sure because I had to fly around making the pan sauce and the veg.

I've never had much luck with pan sauces, so I googled around and found a bit on Serious Eats that seemed to address my issues (tl;dr: restaurant stock has a lot more gelatin in it from the bones used to make it than storebought stock). Now, as it happened, I had boiled down the carcass from Thursday's turkey and it was right full of that stuff; and I thought maybe that would be enough to meet requirements.

1. Take your duck roasting pan, pour off (and reserve, because you're not crazy) all but 1 T. of fat. Put it on the burner on reasonably high.
2. Saute half a smallish onion, minced, in the fat for 30-60 seconds. Don't let it scorch.
3. Pour in 1/2 c. very collagen-y turkey stock, 1/4 c. red wine, and 1/4 c. port that you had already put together in a measuring cup, sorry about that. Stir it around, getting all the nice browned bits off the pan.
4. Let this reduce.
5. Realize that, cast iron or no, the roasting pan doesn't heat that evenly, so pour the contents off into the saucier and put that on the fire instead.
6. Keep stirring until the liquid's reduced to about one-third.
7. Whisk in 2 T. of butter, or a little less if you were too generous with the amount of duck fat left in the pan.
8. Strain and serve up quick before the emulsification breaks again.

I did not get the super-velvety sauce I wanted, but it was closer than I've gotten before, so clearly this bears further investigation. Also, the duck skin didn't really crisp up--I expect it needs longer to do that--but it was good that I pulled it when I did, because we were sailing perilously close to what I consider overcooked. So I guess blast it after only two hours? Hmm.