 5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe. Hank Shaw is the blogger behind Hunter Angler Gardener Cook and the author of "Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast." "I think daily about new ways to cook and eat anything that walks, flies, swims, crawls, skitters, jumps – or grows," Shaw writes. "Honest food is what I’m seeking. Nothing packaged, nothing in a box, nothing wrapped in plastic. I eat meat, and I’m not keen on factory farms, so I either hunt it myself or buy it from real people who raise animals humanely." For Shaw, one food that fits his "honest food" bill is duck. Five times the quack, five times the yum. Five Ways to Eat More Duck: Hank Shaw 1. Check your freezer section. If you are adventurous, you can eke out a fourth meal by using some leftover duck broth and slowly simmer the giblets to make a German specialty called ganseklein, a goose or duck giblet stew served with dried fruit and spices." 2. Buy duck fat. Creamy, white as a glacier and ever-so-slightly ducky, it makes everything it touches taste better. I’d call it 'duck butter,' but that would be doing duck fat a disservice: The stuff is actually lower in saturated fat than butter. A lot lower. We render our own from wild ducks, and cook with it all year long. One serving of duck fat-fried potatoes will break most vegetarians. And while you know it’s duck fat, the flavor is not so intense that it will preclude using it in foods you don’t want to taste ducky. I’ve even used it in pastry dough. One caveat: Because duck and goose fat is so low in saturated fat, it will melt in a warm room. This means if you want to use it in pastry, you will need to take extra precautions to keep everything ice cold." 3. Buy just legs or breasts. There is nothing quite like searing off a couple duck breasts with a simple pan sauce after a long day at work. You can literally make a fancy-pants, gourmet dinner in 20 minutes: sauce, crusty bread, salad, done. And buying just the legs makes it easier to make your own confit, or to expand your winter braising repertoire. In summer, duck legs are ideal barbecued slow and low." 4. Order it in restaurants. Duck is fascinating to chefs because, like pork, it is fatty and it has lots of interesting differences to it, depending on breed, species and even part of the animal. Chefs love to play with that. Take Chef Nobuo Fukuda of Nobuo at Teeter House, a high-end Japanese restaurant in Phoenix: He offers a seared duck salad Japanese-style and foie gras cured in miso and sake, seared hard and served with pears. Chef Michael Smith in Kansas City gets even funkier. Smith offers both fried duck gizzards and duck tongue tacos at his restaurant, Extra Virgin. I could go on, but I’m getting hungry." 5. Hunt it yourself. And every duck hunter I know will take a fat wild pintail or mallard or canvasback over any domestic duck any day in any week. Imagine the flavor of duck turned up to eleven. That’s how good these birds taste. I’ve hunted pretty much everything you can hunt in North America, and a fat wild duck ranks up there with anything else the wild world has to offer. But guess what? You can’t buy them, at any price. To enjoy this slice of culinary nirvana, you must hunt it yourself – or know a hunter who owes you a favor." Is there someone you'd like to see in the hot seat? Let us know in the comments below and if we agree, we'll do our best to chase 'em down. |
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Waffles midgets cows. Peanut butter dingo soup. Banana crack feet lint. Pie lard nugget shower.
Anyone who eats wild duck should know that every wastewater treatment plant with a settling pond in the US has flocks of ducks eating the "goodies" from the pond, all day, every day. I wouldn't eat a wild duck on a bet.
My family were hunters, my grandmother was a great cook. My grandmother always said that the only thing a Goose was good for was to cook a duck in, she didn't particularly like Goose. So, she would pull the duck out of the goose then she and I would get to share the most wonderful duck I have ever eaten and she would feed the rest of the family the Goose that was also made better by having the duck cooked inside.
To learn how to prepare duck fin a Czech. No one, not even the Germans, can make a duck dinner like a Czech. Find a Czech restaurant, and ask for a half of a duck. If it's too much to eat...take it home. It is prepared so well, it is excellent the next day. The Czechs make an art out of preparing a duck dinner...with dumplings! And, be sure to start that Czech dinner with liver dumpling soup. Eat that once and you'll never think about French food again. (Although I have to admit, I had dinner in Paris and from that point on I never thought about French food! WINE, Yes; main course, nah)
"FIND" a Czech
Eat more dick!
I misread the title of this article.. It's not duck I'm looking to eat. *disappointed*
Duck eggs are also superior for baking. They are far richer than chicken eggs and give breads and cookies an extra smoothness that is incredibly tasty. I go out of my way to keep duck eggs on hand for baking (again, locally & ethically farmed).
dont fuggin tell me how to eat duck
awww, poor ducks. Leave 'em alone.
Personally, I find duck meat simply too fat.
Smoking the duck is one way to render out the fat before eating. While I find roast goose WAY too fatty for my tastes, a smoked goose is sublime. Same idea – smoked duck meat is great.
Goose exists in another universe, fat-wise. You can roast an 11 pound goose and wind up with 6 pounds of meat and bones, plus 7 pounds of fat.
They also have an anatomy that is best described as "alien".
Wild geese do not have much fat. You must have experienced only the domestic variety.
Domestic ducks do have a lot of fat but wild ducks do not and they are delicious!
Duck is awesome. We can get duck legs and breasts from a butcher near here, and there is nothing like home made duck leg confit. I make it with olive oil because there isn't an economical source of duck fat around here, but I keep looking. Duck eggs are also very good, a little richer than chicken eggs.
Forget the confit. Too much work. Lightly salt the legs and rub with a little ground rosemay. Cover and keep in fridge for two hours. Then roast the legs at 300 for about 1.5 hours or till tender. A lot less fatty but quite moist. Classic way calls for basically poaching in duck fat. Never understood why.
Your method also sounds good, but confit isn't really a lot of "work"; yes, you leave it in a low oven for a very long time, maybe 6 hours, but it's not like you have to stand there and watch it. But it isn't, of course, the only way to prepare duck.
A L'Orange
Well, aren't you a little sweetheart? You wear that maturity of yours so well.
I do have to nitpick the angels' wings line. "Because this is what angels use to keep their wings from squeaking. Duck fat is manna." It makes no sense to have a religious line in a foodie article as a comparison when you're not even discussing religious food celebrations. Also, not that I literally believe in religion, but manna in the Bible was bread, not duck fat. Please look this stuff up if you're going to make comparisons like that in a professional article.
Actually Marie, manna was not bread at all, but a substance sent from heaven that blanketed the ground like snow, and was gathered up to be eaten. If you complain about someone using a religious reference, then at least KNOW WHAT YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT.
Sent from heaven... yes, it is theorized that this was the excretions of insects....
I bet you are a really fun person in real life.
"Five ways to eat more duck": O.O ... really? What are the odds? I was just looking at a flock of ducks and wondering how I could eat five of them.
Duck terrine, duck confit, seared duck breast – YUM!
I raised ducks for a while, I went to kill one tied it's feet and hung it upside down to get a good bleed out. Then it looked at me and gave a pitiful quack and I cut it down let it go and started crying. Now I just buy one when I want it.
Home raised ducks do have personalities. I had two that would follow me around llike dogs.
We had a pet Mallard that hung out with the outdoor cats. When we would feed the cats and call kitty, kitty, kitty, the cats and duck would come running, loved cat chow.
That's why you need to keep your food animals separate from your pets. It just doesn't pay to get too up close and personal with something you're planning to eat down the line.
That made me teary-eyed picturing that scene.
Wimp.
I always laugh when someone says they had duck and didn't like it because it was too greasy. That just tells me that the person that prepared it did not have a clue as to how to prepare it. Properly done duck will never be too greasy, and never too tough. In my opinion, this country eats far too little duck. Oh, and the duck fat? You have never had eggs and hash browns until you have had them prepared with duck fat.
Here here!
"Here, here" Now THAT's funny.
Where, where?
I do like eggs in duck fat but for me bacon fat is the way to go. To get both I simply use duck eggs.
Had the seared duck with pinenut molé at Frontera Grill in Chicago recently. Amazing stuff.
Answers to a question that nobody has asked.
Response to a comment that was equally unnecessary.
Well, nothing like a thread that involves hunting to bring out the tree hugging bunny h@mping liberals out of the woodwork.
Oh, gosh, Truth, I do believe I encountered your insults on another CNN comments section. Why if someone expresses a preference NOT to eat meat, do you feel so compelled to sling the insults? And equate vegetarianism with liberal politics?
Please, please try for some polite, non-insulting discourse. It's so rude - and useless. We can agree to disagree without labeling each other. It's called being grown up. Try it; you might like it!
I eat it RAW!
Why a duck?
....I wonder just how many people actually remember where that line comes from. Among the funniest squences of dialogue. Thanks for putting it out there! Brings back great laughs and memories.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard. And don't forget you can have roast duck for Christmas dinner because there's no such thing as a sanity clause.
Groucho to contestant: You have 10 children. Why so many?
Contestant: I love my husband and I love my children.
Groucho: I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.
Why are some of these commenters getting their feathers ruffled : ) because some guy likes to eat ducks – I frankly don't give a "duck" what this guy eats and neither should some of you. I tried duck before and didn't really like it – very greasy and somewhat strong flavored. I'll stick with chicken and I'm okay if some you don't give a "cluck" what I eat.
Done properly it is DELICIOUS. Very few places / people cook it properly.
I have to say I tried to cook duck a couple if times and as you say it was too greasy. I basically cooked it like a chicken. However a firnd of ours had us over for dinner a cople of times recently and served roast duck, 'to die for'. Now she emigrated from Germany where duck is more popular than Canada and ran a resteraunt for 35 years so she, unlike me knew how to prepare it. Next step get her to teach my wife and I how to do it.
best place to source duck, asian food stores, they have all the parts you could want and usually broken down or whole. option is also large city park, but they tend to taste a little grassy
One of the best tasting duck dishes I've ever had was at a little place called the Starlight Theatre in Terlingua, Texas (ghost town near Big Bend). They have a lot of local game there and know how to cook it right.
Terlingua? That's where the shooter's in Kennedy assassanation are buried, still got the shovel.
FYI I love duck and hunting, but be aware ducks are some of the most poorly-treated factory farmed animals, swimming around in their own you-know-what. Make sure you buy it from a reputable source..
Yeah, and they have no 401K either. Heartless upper management cads anyway.
I live in Massachusetts – not a rumor, Stop & Shop does carry frozen duck here. My husband loves seared duck breast, but for me duck confit is the best (including feet). I am originally from Ukraine and my mom used to make this awesome duck confit – feet were the best part for me, but I can't find duck sold with feet anywhere here. Any suggestions?
I suggest you come take the feet from the ducks I harvest. I don't eat the feet!
That's a suggestion! But thank you, feet have to cook together with the duck meat. Try making headcheese with the feet instead of tossing them away. Have you ever had headcheese?
Have I ever had "headcheese". Well... not the cheese part...
If you can't hunt it yourself, you could always try an exotic meat vendor online. Send an email to CajunGrocer and I'm sure they could point you in the right direction.
I didn't think about that. I should do that.
We don't sell duck feet in this country. They're all exported to the Ukraine.
Valentina, you might also try looking into locals who raise their own? I have a friend who raises turkeys and will butcher for me. If you go to a local farmer's market you might find families who will farm ducks.
What was that again that Gandhi said?... Hmmm... let me see, oh yeah, here goes: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the ways its animals are treated." We must be a pretty sad, pathetic nation then.
Christine, I am an animal lover, but please, don't like it, don't it.
I love a good old Italian dish- braised cat or dog. A good Beagle has tender meat, not tooooo tough. The Russian Blue is a favorite cat of mine. Unfortunately I have been spending time in court for taking my waiters earning...I just wish they would work harder. Chow.
Hey, I love animals too (preferably medium rare with a side of barbecue beans).
Go eat a carrot, you latte-sipping urbanite, vegan liberal.
Richard – go back to foxnews.com
Does that include you being insufferably juvenile and pretentious to fellow human "creatures?"
Here's one of Ghandi's most famous sayings. "There once was a man from Nantucket..."
I doubt he ever really said that seeing that he was from India, home of Asia's largest slaughter house and where cockfighting is still legal. Look it up then stop spreading lies.
An electrifying statement to be sure.
We treat them well then eat them.
I am a waterfowl hunter, I eat about 30 or 40 ducks a year. I enjoy wood duck mostly, mallards are good too. I don't know what he's talking about with pin tails..yuck. And of the diving birds tend to taste fishy. A grain feeding bird is what you are after. Woodies eat a lot of acorns. Makes them really tasty. Don't over cook, they will get tough. I can't imagine paying $25 for a frozen duck.
Thank you for your input! Finally, someone with something to add to the discussion besides, "Eating animals is wrong."
Like your inane and immature postings and insults have added anything to the discussion ...
Uh oh, TR1... you got under Yes's dress. Maybe there's a duck in hiding "down there". Sure smells that way, don't it though.
Why aren't you a little sweetheart? Thank you for thinking of me that way. I feel so dang sexy now!
To the anti-hunters chiming in... Are you vegetarians? If so, I respect your point of view. As an omnivore I disagree but I respect your choice. If you're not a vegetarian and oppose hunting then I have no respect for your hypocrisy whatsoever. Having your meal raised in a cage, slaughtered out of sight and out of mind, and delivered to your freezer wrapped in cellophane is ok but shooting it in the wild is not?
I'm pretty much of the opinion that if you have never raised, killed, dressed, butchered and cooked your own animals then you SHOULD be a vegetarian. I have no problem with vegetarians and vegans and respect them completely. It's the meat eaters who have the nerve to be anti – hunting that test my nerves. A slaughter house is a thing to behold. Feces and stench and flies and maggots everywhere. That's what you get at the grocery store. I live on 190,000 acres of Game Management land and almost all of the meat I consume is killed, dressed and butchered by my own hand. Wild hogs, deer, turkeys, ducks, doves, squirrel, rabbit, fish...you name it, I eat it. And the animals are respected and managed in the wild to the extent that they are not raised on feed lots knee deep in their own filth. The ones that are taken are free ranging and never know what hit them most of the time.
"I'm pretty much of the opinion that ... you SHOULD be a vegetarian."
Jon, GFY
Vegetarians are self righteous lose rs
If you think that a rose screaming when it's picked is bad, you should hear what an ear of corn or a green bean has to say. Wow!! Wash your mouth out with soap!
ur all a bunch o quacks. i concur w/soundoff...duckgusting in this era of eating less things w/a face. wouldn't b one to ruffle my foul feathers on this one. if you apprecialte animals, foul included...can't eat em.
I'll bet you're all gaunt and yellow.
I wish my wife would eat more duck...
One thing you forgot, you can grow your own. You can get ducklings from just a couple of dollars a piece. (idealpoultry.com).
Im pro-hunting, but I imagine its harder to kill something you have raised yourself. My grandparents raise heifers for meat but they always hire someone else to take care of the slaughtering when it comes time.
If you are raising animals for meat, it is not hard to slaughter them. Do so quickly and painlessly.
Don't name them or treat them as pets. I have 35 chickens in the back yard right now. None of them has a name.
No names? How do you manage to claim them on your tax return if they have no names?
The whole idea of eating a defenseless duck in this day and age is at least, disgusting.
Yum Yum, tasty duck meat.
Ducks are far from defenseless ... why do you think that, whenever something dangerous is flying at you at high speed, people yell "DUCK!!!"?
Defenseless? Well that's just not true. My dad was once attacked by one. Minding his own business. He never saw it coming. It was awful...
I like you :)
So we should only eat animals that can kill us? That limits me to sharks, bears, snakes and some other stuff. Or other humans. Sounds like a good idea!
yeah, i'd rather kill a defenseless fetus.
;)
I bet if you removed that stick from your rectum you'd be a better person and more people would like you.
Rectum hell...damn near killed 'em
I knew I'd find some of you tree-hugging animal lovers on here. There's always a few! Every Thanksgiving I send PETA a card scented with poultry seasoning, just for grins. ;)
they have plenty of defenses...just not many offenses...
I wouldn't want to marry her.
Fortunately, I did not eat one this day and age. Yesterday, though...different story.
Defenseless? Did you ever try to pick up a mad duck? I didn't think so.
No ... but I've kissed a mad cow or two.
After last call, right? One of the all-time favorite C&W hits... "She's a' Lookin' Better After Every Beer?
i've found wild duck to be very very tough, might be i'm not expert w/cooking duck but my granny was and she said most of the duck is too tough to even bother with
Wild ducks are tough because they were raised in "tha hood".
#6. Get it smoked. You'll never want to eat it another way.
I have tried tea smoked with asian spices and cherry wood. Excellent meat. We are getting chickens and i would like a few ducks or geese.
That's what "she" said.
With respect to the contributor, when I last checked, a pair of duck breasts cost about as much at my local grocery store as a whole duck. I don't get duck often, but when I do, it's a special (and relatively inexpensive) affair. A carcass for stock, breasts for searing, and "dark quarters for confit. That's two to three meals for my family of thee and is there anything tastier?
Bacon wrapped dates.
I had pet ducks when I was little and as a result I refuse to eat duck. But either way, title really doesn't make sense. Want to eat more duck? Buy it at the grocery store, order it at a restaurant, hunt it yourself... well, duh. A better article and read would have been why you'd want to eat duck in the first place and maybe a good recipe or two (not that I want to eat duck, but that article would have made more sense).
I know exactly how you feel. I had a parakeet, then I had some goldfish, a poodle, and finally a gerbil. I wouldn't eat any of those for sure. Good show!
Look at the picture. The duck's bill is the face of a yellow dog. The duck's nostrils are the eyes. The black dot at the tip of the bill is the dog's nose. The base of the duck's bill is the dog's ears. You can't un-see it now.
=>
The yellow dog you see is the Lab I use to retrieve my ducks. Conserve game, use a trained retriever.
You look at clouds a lot, right?
"Duck Butter".... HA!
i'm afraid that term is already taken
As an avid duck hunter and ex-chef I would say this article hits all the right notes. Thanks Hank! I'm hungry now!
Another foodie moron. Why don't you leave the animals alone you tiny dick wad.
So, you don't eat meat? I'd rather hunt a natural animal and eat pure meat not loaded with hormones and other garbage. And even if you are a vegan.... animals hunt and kill each other for food every day, so why can't we eat other animals for food as well? Take your lame "leave animals alone" and shove it where the sun don't shine!
I didn't realize animals use guns to hunt....try hunting with your bare hands and see how well you do.
I didn't realize animals used cars, airplanes, boats, etc. to travel. Try walking across the country and see how well you do.
There is nothing wrong with using tools
So because we use tools to quickly kill the food we eat we shouldn't hunt anymore? I have caught and killed animals with just my hands (mostly fish and other stream life but i've run down a rabbit and a raccoon as well) and let me tell you when I shoot a dear it has less emotional trama and feels less pain than any gazelle on the discovery channel chased and mauled by a lion. Ever see a cat eat a mouse? I always feel horable for the poor thing. I hunt because i like to and like to cook with what i catch.
Try harvesting wheat with your bare hands and see how well you do.
Noodling. Look it up.
Yes, and of course we imitate everything the animal kingdom does. If dogs meet each other by smelling each other's anal glands, I guess we should do that too. Or, hey, like birds, we could regurgitate our food for our babies! Sorry, Eric, your argument is lame.
Because they're tasty!!!
If you don't like it, go read vegan articles.
A rose screams when it's picked. If you think that's bad, you should hear what a cantaloupe, goober pea, or rutabaga has to say about it when their lives are cruelly terminated.
Man yuck I had a bite of duck and it was blah!!! I will stick to chicken.
Thank you ever so much! Signed, Daffy
[hey guys, it worked.]
be vewy vewy qwiet
we're huntin wabbits
What a dumb article. So boring and poorly written....basically 1 way to eat duck...buy it at a store and its way too expensive !!!
So it's ramen for you tonight. Enjoy.
When I grow up, I'm gonna be a Duck Blower upper in a Chinese restaurant for fried Duck. It's a Daffy job but somebody's gotta do it.
I like duck with quackers.
Sorry, I could not resist.