Roast duck

A friend of mine, Daisy (in the middle), is currently living in Madrid and popped over this week to celebrate her 21st with a rather wonderful party. To say thank you and hasta luego I decided to do some sort of duck dish. Unfortunately I didn’t plan it very well at all and ended up doing a roast lunch on the warmest weekend 2010 has seen so far.

After rejecting a neat little oven-ready duck (it felt too much like cheating) I ended up with a giant, free-range bird that looked quite daunting. Especially scary were the little stumps of feathers left poking out of its wings… or whatever those bits were. I’m still not quite sure.

When I shoved the squidgy carcase onto a chopping board to prepare it I got a bit of a shock. The duck had TROUSERS on. I imagine these used to be it’s legs but it’s wings were so massive I freaked out slightly and started to get a bit hysterical, imagining that these extra bits of skin were bum flaps or something.


My little friend also came with giblets. As these are usually in a bag shoved inside I grabbed a trouser leg in each hand and had a look. There was just a big lump of red flesh with the spine in it (I’m not really selling this, am I?) and I realised I was going to have to get its insides out myself. After jumping around manically laughing for five nervous minutes I whipped out some latex gloves and prepared to get my hands metaphorically dirty. Thankfully as I tentatively poked my fingers where no fingers should go I felt plastic. I thanked whatever higher power was looking down on me that day and pulled out a little bag of ducky innards.

With the oven preheated to 200°c I plonked Daffy (see what I did there?) onto a roasting rack in a roasting tin and with the tip of a knife pricked the skin all over.

Obviously the times change with the weight of the bird but my duck needed to be roasted for about two hours. An hour in I took it out of the oven to drain the fat. There wasn’t too much in the tray but this was because it had all collected in the cavity. With the help of an oven glove, some tongs and my mum this ended up in a measuring jug, ready to be sloshed over the roast potatoes with a bit of olive oil.

Sixty minutes later a gorgeous, golden duck came out of the oven and after letting the meat rest for ten minutes I set about carving. And then gave up. In the end I just sort of tore it apart with a knife and fork. I had been unsure what to do gravy-wise and ended up buying a Waitrose shallot and red wine sauce which was lovely.


While this whole post makes it sound rather horrid it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever cooked. The nicest thing if you ask Charlotte. I would go as far as saying delicious. But as a complete novice in the kitchen I still get nervous around uncooked meat so it’s nice to know what you’re up against.