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Can anyone suggest favorite sauce recipes to serve with roast duck, or favorite ways to use leftovers? Soup is already planned
My husband and I will be alone this Thanksgiving, so we decided to cook a smaller bird than a turkey, specifically a duck. I like duck and frequently order it at restaurants where available, but don't have much experience. I found a low slow roasting recipe that looks promising. I'm already familiar with soup making.
What advice do you have re sauces and meals using leftovers?
Hoisin sauce. It's very commonly served with duck dishes in Chinese restaurants. It's savory, sweet, and salty enough to cut through the duckfat. Combine with some Chinese steamed buns which will sop up the sauce and duckfat to make it extra luxurious. Garnish with scallions.
Cooking duck isn't hard if you have experience cooking chickens and turkeys. All fowl are cooked basically the same way.
↑ this is definitely my recommendation as well. Duck is my absolute favorite meat, and IMO Hoisin is the perfect sauce for it. I get Peking duck every year for my birthday dinner, and it's always served with Hoisin. Also usually a super simple dish as well. You just wrap the duck slices in a super thin chun bing/spring pancake, with some matchstick cut cucumbers and spring onions, and a dab of Hoisin. Best thing ever, IMO.
I also usually have confit duck once a year or so too though. And it's typically served with a fruity balsamic reduction of some sort which also cuts through the rich fattiness as well. My personal favorite is a blueberry balsamic reduction, but I've also had apricot, fig, and marmalade based sauces on duck before at various restaurants too, which also tasted great.
You can make Portuguese arroz de pato (duck rice) with the leftovers, you'll just have to keep the bones and skin to make the broth (you can probably use the same method for making chicken broth). Here's a recipe to get you started:
https://wetravelportugal.com/arroz-de-pato/
If you can get your hands on some Portuguese chouriço (chorizo) and thick sliced pork belly it does make a difference, but Spanish chorizo should do in a pinch.
Keep the melted fat as ice cubes, in the freezer. Use them for many things in place of lard or oil. If you amass a stockpile, cook french fries for poutine in it.
This is late, but in case you plan to do duck another year, or someone else is curious I did a simplified Peking duck this year using this recipe: https://redhousespice.com/peking-duck/. It's just my husband and I as well and a duck is perfect for a holiday meal plus using the carcass for stock. It was extremely easy, no harder than dry brining a turkey. I made a couple of modifications. One being hoisin sauce instead of sweet bean sauce to serve, the other being a tablespoon of oyster sauce and a half a tsp of five spice powder rubbed inside the cavity before stuffing it. The duck was fragrant and juicy. The oil step is necessary for crispy skin, broiling didn't quite do it. I did handmake my pancakes using a recipe from the same site, but a couple of years ago we just used this recipe, https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-make-mandarin-pancakes-dumpling-wrappers/, to make the pancakes from premade dumplings wrappers.
For leftovers I did a take on this Chinese duck soup, https://thewoksoflife.com/duck-noodle-soup/, but modified it to make rice cake soup. Because I love rice cakes. It was extremely easy, quick, and is a really nice light but flavorful meal after Thanksgiving. I'd suggest if you want to make this that you be confident in your ability to season to your own tastes though as I found it to need adjusting with soy sauce and bullion powder.
Thank you!
In case you or someone else is curious, the roast duck recipe I tried also resulted in beautifully crispy skin. It does require attention every hour for five hours but it wasn't difficult.
Five hour duck
Wraps, with hoisin sauce as mentioned in another comment. Cut up duck meat into small bite size stripes. Prepare vegetables such as spring onions, cucumber, avacado and lamb's lettuce. Use either flour tortillas, or make moo shu pancakes, which are basically the same thing but thinner. https://unfussyepicure.com/2016/03/homemade-moo-shu-pancakes.html
Each person just builds their own wrap as part of the meal puttingin the meat veg and sauce they want. We do this quite often but duck is a hassle to get here, so usually use chicken thighs cooked in the oven with some spices.