Put the ducks in the brine and cover with a weighted plate to make sure they remain fully submerged for 24 hours. Fill a large wok or saucepan with water and bring to the boil.
Using the hooks to hold onto the duck, dip one into the boiling water to blanch it. Then, holding the duck over the water, use a large ladle to scoop boiling water all over the skin. Do this a few times — you will notice that the skin will start to tighten. Tightening the skin allows it to dry out properly, which will give you a super-crisp texture at the end.
Repeat with the second duck. Scalding the duck made its skin taught, somewhat smooth but also goose-bumpy. After scalding, the duck has to hang to dry before it gets rubbed with a colorant of mostly diluted maltose or honey. Rory diligently set up two sawhorses in the garage, with a metal extension rod between them:. We hung the duck and after 15 minutes, it rolled off the sawhorse support with a thud and we ran back into the garage to fish the duck from the roasting rack that it fell upon.
In the end, I stuck the duck on a roasting rack in the fridge, which I imagined, simulated a very cold, dryish environment. I left the duck uncovered overnight. That was duck 2 and I eventually deep-fried the duck for the fragrant and very crispy Sichuan duck.
I thought about it more and got smarter. Forget the hook and hanging. Hom, a chef, TV personality and author, has you simmer the following for 20 minutes:.
Then he instructs you to ladle the mixture over the duck, as if to bathe it. I put the blown up duck remember it has not been scalded on a baking sheet. Then I ladled the hot seasoning liquid over the duck. With each progressive coating, the duck got darker and its skin tightened. I turned the duck over and coated the back too. When done, the duck skin was smooth and a lovely tan color. The latter is an option, but it's a lot more awkward—there's a good chance you'll wind up swinging a bunch of ducks around on a stick like a deranged puppeteer as you struggle to secure the tension rod against the walls of your fridge.
S-hooks also allow you to easily move the ducks around throughout the aging process without having to disassemble the whole rig, plus they can be used for hanging pots and pans or kitchen towels when you're done with this project. If you're like me and never were in the Scouts or went to sailing camp, there's a YouTube deep dive on knot-tying in your future.
Finally, a few sheets of parchment paper or a rimmed baking sheet are all you need to catch drippings from the birds during their first three days of hanging. So you have the equipment, the ducks have been broken down into parts , fat is rendering , and stock is simmering on the stovetop, and space has been cleared in the fridge. It's time to string up the birds. First things first, give your cleared-out fridge shelves a good wipe-down to ensure that the ducks dry-age in a clean and sanitary space.
We don't want that to happen. So before you hang up the birds, get rid of that moldy container of leftovers in the back of the fridge. Secure the tension rod at a height that will allow you to hang the ducks so that they aren't touching the shelf below them. Then lay your sheet of parchment or baking sheet on that bottom shelf. With clean or gloved hands, dry each duck crown as best you can by wiping the skin and cavity with paper towels.
Working one duck at a time, cut a piece of twine—around eight inches should do—and tie a butcher's knot around the small stub of neck at one end; then tie another knot around an S-hook at the other. Hang the ducks on the tension rod, making sure that they're not touching the bottom shelf or one another. Now comes the hard part: waiting. Let the ducks hang out, literally. As with baking, the less you open the door, the better. That's not to say you can't go about your life, opening the fridge as you normally do to grab what you need during those two weeks of aging.
But maybe try to limit the amount of times you aimlessly open the door to stare into its depths, hoping that it has magically restocked itself with the snacks of your dreams. During the first few days of aging, the cavity and rib cage area will drip. Moisture loss is a part of the dry-aging process, and it's nothing to worry about; just change out the parchment every couple of days until the dripping stops. Other than that, you'll want to monitor for any signs of spoilage, like off odors or visible mold.
As long as you work clean, you shouldn't have any problems, but if you do, you can rest assured that they'll present themselves in a very obvious way—there's no mistaking the smell of rotting meat. I dry-aged a lot of ducks in my restaurant-cooking days, as well as a small flock for this Big Duck Project, and I've never had any problems with spoilage when dry-aging ducks on the cage.
That said, if you do, cut your losses and start over. It's not worth making yourself or others ill by trying to salvage things.
How long should you dry-age ducks? Well, that depends on what you're looking for. If you simply want to dry out the skin on a bird enough so that you can get ultra-crispy results when searing or roasting the breast, then you can go as little as a one-night open-air hang, just as you would with chicken or turkey as with chicken and turkey, it's probably not worth rigging up the whole hanging setup if you're just air-drying overnight; a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet is sufficient for that.
But you'd be missing out on the textural and flavor enhancement qualities of dry-aging that ducks and other meaty game birds benefit from more than their paler poultry brethren.
We are going to marinate the duck with these three ingredients:. Avoid getting the mixture on the outside of the skin. Finally, place the ginger inside the cavity. The skin is quite tough, so be careful not to break the sticks or poke your hands. When sewing from the tail of the duck, start with the bamboo stick through the left side of the duck skin and then through the right side of the duck skin, repeating until the opening is closed.
The third step is to blow up the duck skin! Blowing up the skin is done by blowing air between the flesh and skin, which makes the skin crispier when it is cooked.
The best tool for this is a bicycle pump, but we did not have one at home. My friend tried to use the inflatable mattress air pump but the pressure was too low and not effective. In desperation, My friend suggested blowing with his mouth, but I did not encourage this method.
What I did was use a steel ruler to separate the flesh from skin from the neck down along the chest. Be careful not to puncture the skin. Good separation of the duck skin makes it easy to blow up the skin with the mattress air pump.
If you are finding this step difficult, you can skip it. Prepare a large baking pan or pot, and carefully pour in boiling water. Put the gassed duck into the hot water for 5 seconds only! This time is very critical; if it is too short, you will not achieve the right effect, and too long and oil from the skin will seep out, also losing the right effect. You will need to move the duck around in the water, flipping it over to make sure the whole duck is dipped into the water.
Do not allow water to get into the cavity.
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