How to Make Duck à l'Orange the Right Way

today we are making duck a l'orange [Music] duck a L'Orange it is a classic classic French dish that a little bit is weighed down by you know that classic classic French reputation you have visions of that 1970s platter and it's in that like 1970s Kodachrome photo and the oranges are so bright it's so orange and that almost tells you something already that you kind of don't like about it which is that orange sauce is too sweet and we're gonna get into all of that because duck a L'Orange is all about the sauce most likely if you've ever had it you've had a version that is not really the way it's supposed to be maybe I'm wrong maybe you've had it before the right way but we're gonna do we're gonna do duck a L'Orange I have my duck like chickens and turkeys and everything else it often comes with the neck that usually hidden in the cavity sometimes you get some bonus stuff like livers or hearts and we want some more stuff in this duck so there's a couple things we want to do to prep the duck the first thing we want to do is take off some of the excess fat duck has so much fat in its skin if you leave it all on it's just more and more of a mess to deal with while you're roasting the duck so what I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna take the wing it and wing tip portion and I'm gonna cut at the joint yeah right through there this is going to go into my stock other thing we want to do is prick the duck skin only in the fattiest parts that's gonna help render fat more efficiently as the duck is roasting later so one more somewhat optional thing to do is to blanch the duck before you roast it it tightens it up naturally which helps give the duck a good shape at the end and maybe gives you a little bit of a jumpstart on the rendering of the fat because just the skin really kind of gets exposed to the heat quickly big pot of boiling water we're gonna just lower this duck right down into the pot I'm gonna keep holding it by its legs so I really want to give this bird a chance to drain it just tightens it up a little bit and gives it a nice even shape so your duck is less likely to come out of the oven when you roast it with like one lay hanging out over here and the other one bend in like that salt this nice and evenly all over and obviously this duck is wet so we're just gonna give it at least an hour you can leave it up to overnight 24 hours that's gonna really improve the Browning of the skin and the roasting later the thing with the sauce for duck a L'Orange is it doesn't even start with the citrus it starts with a stock you have to make a good stock to make this sauce I have tried to make this sauce with store-bought stock it just doesn't work the reason is that the sauce has to reduce down so much and the stock becomes more and more concentrated as you do it and so any flaws any you know any anything that's not great about that store-bought stock just becomes more and more obvious until you've got this concentrated little pool of a disgusting I'm gonna make a beef stock and I've got my beef bones right here before I do anything else these bones need to roast why do they have to roast because I'm making what's called a brown stock you roast your bones you roast the vegetables you get color on them first you develop a deeper flavor truth is you can use a white stock here too because I'm going to make a stock on a stock using roasted parts from the duck that we're cooking when you're looking for your beef bones try to get ones that have connective tissue meaning ligaments cartilage tendons they are loaded with collagen and collagen is incredibly tough and chewy but with long cooking or very high heat cooking a pressure cooker that collagen breaks down and it melts into gelatin and gelatin is soft and silky and it gives your stock in your sauces this body that you're after for a long time I recommended everyone at home when when people ask me about making stocks at home don't make a beef stock it's just not worth it it's a it's a restaurant kind thing it takes so many hours you're much better off at home just doing a really nice chicken stock but with a pressure cooker you actually can make a great beef stock at home and in a reasonable amount of time let's start roasting these bones let's do it here are my aromatic vegetables that will go into the stock also we'll put the bones in two and a half hours that's four beef bones chicken you can do shorter like an hour or something and we're just gonna let it go our pressure cooker stock is ready I'm gonna strain it carefully there's lots of fat on top look familiar I'm doing what I just did which is making more Brown stock but this time with the duck because I'm going to make the duck stock using the beef stock is the base because we're trying to layer this all on in in stock ssin this is me and inception you know the walls are the floor our duck and aromatics have browned here now check this out this is why you need a homemade stock for a sauce like this you see that it's beef jelly I'm gonna take my roasted duck trimmings and I'm gonna put them in there along with the aromatic vegetables so while this is already starting to simmer and reduce I'm going to be making what's sometimes called a double stop and when it's reduced by about half at that point my two quarts of beef stock will have become one quart of ducky beef stock then I will take that and I will reduce that one quart down to one cup now is time for the part of the sauce that gives it its signature sweet and sour flavor no I am NOT talking about the citrus that hit I pulled you that's the death the trick I'm talking about something called the guest streak gastrique is a very simple thing it requires sugar and requires some kind of acid almost always a vinegar I have red wine vinegar here take your sugar add water to it really doesn't matter how much water you just need enough to dissolve the sugar and I'm going for kind of a deep mahogany whatever that means what does that mean to you here we go so now you got to be careful here it is going to get very active I've turned off the heat there we go if you pour it all in at once it can be explosive just gonna start swirling and as I now add the rest of my vinegar and now I'm just gonna cook this for a couple minutes to let it reduce a tiny bit and our gastrique will be done whoo it's pungent yeah it's been a little more than an hour the duck has you know done its thing with its salt and it's time to cook it the truth is a duck is a really easy thing to roast you kind of can't ruin a duck in a certain way duck meat is delicious even when it's well-done even the breast meat is delicious when it's well done so we're gonna go in high heat do you be prepared high heat with duck it's it the fat starts to render very quickly it gets really smoky brace yourself so really what has to happen now is we have to reduce our stock down I'll take a little while roast our ducks that'll take a little while if you want an internal temperature for the duck if you need a temperature to aim for I'll take it all the way up to 175 well done it's gonna it's gonna be delicious all right it's time to talk about the citrus so the thing with duck a l'orange is the orange sauce is actually a sauce a classic French sauce called sauce bigger I'd and sauce bigger I'd is named after what are sometimes called big Arad oranges more often you'll see them described as bitter oranges sour oranges so most duck a L'Orange recipes just have you you make a mixture of orange juice and lemon juice and fake the flavor of bitter oranges with that and in that kind of slow creep that sugar has a way of doing over the years the sauce has gotten sweeter and sweeter and sweeter so to get back to the roots the first thing we need to do is we need to understand what those sour oranges really taste like they have a really interesting and great flavor and aroma they're they're not enjoyable to eat raw they're truly bitter and sour let's see what they're like inside moment of truth ah look at that if you can find bitter oranges I highly highly highly recommend you use the bitter oranges to make this sauce if you don't you can use the navel oranges with the lemons I'm gonna make the sauce the true sauce for in this video with the navel oranges and the lemons because that's what most of you are gonna have available I'm gonna take the zest off you know a lot of an oranges flavor is really in its nest you're going to try to get that white pith off like that take your orange zest stack a few together and cut a fine julienne I'm gonna blanch it I'm gonna in one a 50/50 mix of orange juice and lemon juice here's our stock finally reduced way way way way down and out let's see if we can see let's see it's texture ready here we go look at that look at that it's so thick get a flame under it in goes our citrus juice Shh now we start to introduce the guests streak you want to go just a little bit of time like one teaspoon at a time I'm gonna add two teaspoons and then I'll taste it there's one you don't need more than a two three four teaspoons probably burn the Ducks oh good call Joel butter whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk and the butter should just emulsify right into the sauce and now finally my blanched citrus zest garnish goes in a little pinch of salt a little bit of pepper look at the viscosity okay you can run your finger right through the back and look how just hold that line [Music] it just glazes the meat Wow what's so great about this when you make the sauce right is you have the richness of the roast duck and the fattiness of the duck skin and fat and the sauce is rich too but it's got this like laser-focused tartness from the vinegar from the gastrique and from the citrus that just like oh it's such a great contrast and it's not cloying at all and it kind of tastes like the holidays

Channel: Serious Eats

Views: 251,302

Keywords: Serious Eats, Duck, Roast Duck, how to roast a duck, duck a l'orange, orange sauce, sauce bigarade, holiday recipes, Christmas dinner, lorange

Id: IikOAHUl8J4

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019