The Technique Behind Perfectly Seared Duck - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph

perfectly seared duck is crisp on the outside and succulent and tender on the inside today i'm going to share with you the technique in seared duck breasts and it might become an alternative for the everyday chicken breast so how do you start well you need a skillet and you need a duck breast right so in front of me here i have a 8 ounce duck breast duck breast range in size so from 8 ounces they can go up to a pound per split breast that's what this is with chicken breasts and with duck breasts the the entire thing is considered a breast so this is really a have what i'm gonna do today is i'm gonna show you how to score the duck breasts so scoring the fat and what that will do is when we cook it it's going to render out in the pan so you won't get that layer of fat over your duck breast so take a very sharp knife and you're going to cut through the skin and the fat but not into the meat so gently glide your knife and you want to create a diagonal line you want to go maybe a half inch in between each so i'm cutting down through the skin into the fat but not into the meat now today i'm using duck breast these are long island duck breasts long island duck breasts are mild in flavor compared to their cousins which are muscovy duck breasts which tend to be a little richer in flavor a little bit more gamey so if you're new to duck and you're a little intimidated by that flavor try searching out long island duck and now since i have i'm going one way i'm gonna flip the breast and i'm going to cut the other way creating a crosshatch pattern this is a very similar process for you know if you're doing your holiday ham you would be scoring the ham allowing the fat that goes underneath the skin to kind of render out so this looks pretty good again a sharp knife is key here and now what you want to do is you want to season the duck breast so i'm going to use a little bit of salt here some freshly ground pepper season both sides and now take your duck breast and this goes into a cold pan and you might think that's a little weird but really what we're doing here is we want to cook the duck breast over a medium-low heat and you want to do this slowly and what that's going to do is it's going to melt the fat at an even rate encouraging it to come out of the duck breasts and pool in the pan so really rendering out the fat which will yield a wonderful duck breast that's not greasy so this process here is going to take about six to eight minutes for the pan to come up to temperature and for the majority of that fat to render out so it's been about 10 minutes here on this medium low heat and i'm going to give the duck breasts a flip now you can see the skin is starting to crisp up nicely now i'm going to take off some of this fat i'm going to take off probably all of it leaving maybe a teaspoon left in the pan and i'm going to cook the duck breast on the other side now for about a minute so it's been a minute on this side on this bottom side here now and i'm going to take this right to a preheated 350 degree oven and i'm going to continue cooking the duck breasts until an instant read thermometer one of these guys insert it into the thickest part of the duck breast is 125 degrees and that is medium rare so right into the oven all right so the duck has been in the oven for about four minutes and you want to take this and let it rest like anything else if you're cooking a steak if you're cooking chicken before you carve it before you slice it you want to let it rest so that the juices have a chance to kind of redistribute through the duck breast so i would say this is going to take about five to six minutes to rest so the duck breast has been resting for about five minutes and now i'm going to cut it now you want to cut duck breasts on an extreme bias use a very sharp knife here and you should have a blushy pink interior this is medium so slice this up you can serve this with any number of sauces so there you go guys perfectly cooked duck breast a nice blushy pink the skin is crisp there's really no fat so it's not greasy now if you have any kitchen conundrums as always write in the comment section below or reach out to me using the hashtag kitchen conundrums there you go guys yet another one enjoy you

Channel: Everyday Food

Views: 112,518

Keywords: Recipe, Recipes, Cooking, Cook, Food, Dinner, Easy meal, Dinner tonight, Everyday Food, Home made, Sarah Carey, Martha Stewart, Family meal, easy cooking, how to, food ideas, quick dinners, fast recipes, easy recipes, quick recipes, Duck, Seared, Technique, Tips

Id: 6ZajatKorLQ

Length: 4min 57sec (297 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2016