Duck Stewed With Ginger

I love duck.  Whether it is cooked through with crispy skin (think Peking duck in Chinatown windows), seared and pink, confited until fork tender or even dry cured into chewy little duck ham slices - the combination of dark, gamey meat and lots of melt in the mouth fat is always going to be a winner.  The skin and the fat is so sublime it can end up being the best bit, whilst others dive in for the breast meat when I'm confronted with the British takeaway favourite crispy duck my pancakes are always filled with skin and the wobbliest bits of fat, the meat is good - sure - but the fat is better.  Even with all that loving I've never stewed a duck before but looking through the fantastic Cook Malaysian this weekend a recipe caught my eye.  Duck deep fried then stewed in a dark soy gravy with masses of ginger had to leave a tasty dish.

I managed to get the last duck from Sainsbury and as it was a bit larger than the recipe suggested I've adapted the recipe to suit a larger British duck.  The result was very good, the meat almost fell off the bone whilst not being overcooked and dry and the stock was nice and rich, it even set to a jelly when left to cool.  When you deep fry the duck make sure to really give it lots of colour, I didn't cook some of my bits enough and the colour washed off during the simmering, leaving the skin a bit wobbly and pallid.  If you get the meat and skin really dark it should keep both colour and texture even after the hour simmering. 

Duck Stewed with Ginger

Ingredients

1 duck, approx. 2kg
2 TB light soy sauce
1.5 TB dark soy sauce
8 dried shittake mushrooms, soaked
75gr ginger, peeled
3 cloves garlic
3 spring onions
1 TB preserved black beans
750ml water
1 ts sugar
2 ts sesame oil
Few grinds of black pepper
1 TB Shaoxing rice wine
2 TB cornflour slaked with 2 TB of water
1/2 iceberg lettuce

Method

Cut duck into pieces, complete with bone then marinade in 1 TB each of light and dark soy.  I chopped the wings and legs off with a cleaver and then cut each into two pieces.  I then cut the breasts and their bone out of the carcass with a pair of poultry shears before chopping each into three pieces.  This left me with 14 pieces in total.

Deep fry duck pieces till well browned.

Remove stems from mushroom and halve, roughly chop garlic, slice ginger into 3mm slices, mash black beans into a paste

Add salt, sugar, sesame oil, pepper and remaining soy sauces into the water

Stir fry ginger and garlic for 1 min then add bean paste and give another minute.

Add duck, gravy and mushrooms, bring to the boil and then cover, turning down heat and simmering for 1 hour

Take off lid, turn up heat and reduce for a bit, add cornflour, simmer till thick then add spring onions (cut into 4cm lengths) and the rice wine.

Serve on top of lettuce leaves that have been briefly boiled.

Adapted from Cook Malaysian by Lee Sook Ching.

Comments

[Lennie Nash]

Hi I love duck too, one of my favourites. Gonna try this recipe tonight, just hope there's still a duck left for sale somewhere in London. Will let you know how it goes. Photos are fantastic!

[Lizzie]

I looooove duck skin. My parents recently made a 5 spice roasted duck brushed with honey and I literally fought my dad for the last bits of skin. My whingeing won out in the end...

[GillthePainter]

that's a nice looking piece of duck cooking. I can imagine how it tastes and smells just looking at the picture. Gill.

[Joshua Armstrong]

I was pleased with how it looked Gill. Some of the pieces hadn't been fried enough and so lost their colour when stewed but a a little bit of selective picking from the pot helped the photo out. Don't tell anyone I told you that though.

[sunflower]

Use the darkest and thickest soy you got, mushroom soy is good so is ketcup manis, rub all over with soy (if you like together with some 5 spice powder is also good). Let the duck soaked in the colour for at least one hour then deep fried or shallow fried to get that bronze brown colour. I normally fried whole duck like this before stewing.

[GillthePainter]

he he, mum's the word.

[Bridget Harris]

Josh, I made this the other night and it was delicious. I do have a query though. I found the cooked stock quite swamped with fat. I don't have a deep fat fryer so just fried a few pieces at a time in deep oil in a saucepan. I did manage to get good colour on the duck as you advised. I realise the duck is very fatty in the first place but I wonder if you had this trouble too. I had left overs and when they were chilled and the fat removed it was really lovely.

As ever, great blog!

[Joshua Armstrong]

Glad you liked it Bridget. I let the duck drain in a sieve between batches of frying which probably helped a bit. There was some fat on the stock though but not particularly unpleasant amounts and the cornflour seemed to bind it into the sauce. My duck was pretty lean though which must be the biggest factor.