Duck a l’orange
Valentine’s Day at home demands a special dish for two. We took on a favorite, that we’ve ordered many times in various French restaurants. In fact, my first duck was when I was about 12 at a restaurant in Marin County, CA. While eating dinner, during a rainstorm, the power went out. That was good news for me, as I could just pick that duck leg up and finish it!
We found a whole duck (frozen) at our local grocer. Julia’s recipe seemed pretty straight forward. Certainly not as challenging or time consuming as Boeuf Bourguignon. It turns out the devil is in the details as we ran into several challenges along the way.
We started by taking the giblets, etc. found inside the bird and made a rich duck stock that we simmered for about 2 hours. Next, we trussed the duck, after salt, pepper and inserting some of the orange peel.
Unlike most modern recipes, where everything is laid out in steps on a page, Julia uses basic recipes over and over. Then they are pieced together in the desired recipe. This causes one to have to flip pages back and forth; which can lead to mis-steps so we had to stay focused. This proved very challenging on this night as it started to snow as we watched the temp drop to single digits. (Little did we know what was to come)
Around the duck we placed onions and carrots, keeping the duck on the rack so the yummy juices would fall on those veggies.
The recipe said to cook the duck at 425 degrees for the first 15 minutes and then to reduce the heat to 350. This is to create a nice sear
Here’s where we went wrong. The recipe said to cook a total of 1 hour and 20 to 40 minutes. After 1 hour and 40 minutes we determined it must be done.
We then started with segmenting the oranges, careful to remove all the pith into neat slices.
We had to save the skins as a part of the sauce.
Steve is better with knife skills. Check out the technique.
This is where modern technology comes into play. We have a wonderful new “Meater” meat thermometer. (Check out Meater HERE) Instead of taking it out (or putting into place when we started) we simply took the duck out.
The veggies were dried up and the duck stock was essentially gone and we needed a cup for the next step of the sauce.
Beautiful golden color duck as we continued to turn throughout the roasting.
But what happened to the lovely juices and beautiful veggies?
We started to cut into the duck and it was essentially raw in the middle. We then thought to insert the Meater and found it had an internal temp of only 125. It needed to reach 170-180. Well that was ok, since we had to figure out how to salvage the sauce.
Back in the oven, now with Meater inserted, we now turned to making a quick orange sauce. We pulled back out the giblets, added some onion, carrot and beef broth and let quickly simmer for 30 minutes. Now that we had a base again we could finish the orange sauce.
Now we were back on track enough for a taste test. To keep things simple, we made a basic French “potato chip” as a side. It was good but because we did not have those pan drippings it was lacking the deep richness. We did add more fresh juice from the oranges to pump up the flavor
The duck comes with a packet of orange sauce. We held out and did NOT use.
Now the duck was fully cooked, we were ready for final assembly. Since it was just two of us, we knew we were just going to eat half of it so we saved the other half for leftovers (the great Texas snowstorm started that night, so we were grateful for delicious, easy to heat leftovers.
We paired with two different wines to try. First a classic 2019 Chateauneuf-du-Pape. This was a bottle we picked up at Total Wine for about $19. We also tasted a Domaine Carneros The Famous Gate 2017 Pinot Noir. This was from our wine club and retails for just under $100. In all honesty the $19 French wine was a more natural pairing. Don’t get me wrong the Domaine Carneros was fabulous, but with most California Pinots, it was more fruit forward, less subtle than its French counterpart.
Finally done! Total cooking time was 2 hours and 15 minutes. I have since read posts from others who have tried this version who reported the same underdone duck we had experienced.
After all the work, it was a beauty.
It was now almost 8PM, snowing and 9 degrees out. We had our beautiful duck dinner so we were happy.
We paired with those yummy chips to dip in the sauce and a simple salad. Happy Valentine’s Day!
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