Duck Lust
12-12-12
I woke today just like I would wake on any other day of the week. Tired. My bother in law is in town; sleeping in the living room on a comfortable air mattress waiting to be woken up by the smell of cooking food or my two little ones jumping on his belly. Mikey doesn’t come by all to often since there is an unfortunate seventy-five mile gap between our home and his, and we generally have opposing schedules. Today though, is not one of these days. He, Sarah, the kids and I are going to have a blast and we don’t even know it yet.
Mikey made it a point to be the one to cook an amazing breakfast with our wonderful tasty fresh eggs, most of which were laid this morning while we slept in a bit. There was non left to scrap out to the birds after we had our fill. Sarah made us French pressed coffee with a splash of sugar cookie creamer to sweeten the bitterness of Black Silk. After most breakfasts we plan out dinner and the rest of the day, this wasn’t one of those days. I kinda knew what was going to be for dinner but no one was really talking about it.
My nephew showed up shortly after breakfast and Sarah started planning our afternoon. We loaded up the kids and headed to the sponge docks and enjoyed an afternoon of store front shopping. We took our time and lots of pictures, after getting home my nephew went home too. The fun started shortly after Sarah’s return from dropping off Hunter.
After a few informational YouTube videos and a little bit of planning; My brother-in-law and I were ready to harvest a couple of ducks for a nice family dinner. We set up several strands
of twine for tying off anything that needed tying, set up a log with an empty five gallon bucket for catching anything that needed catching. We prepared a hot bath for loosening feathers, empty trash can with a fresh clean out bag. I sharpened my machete and butchering knives. We enjoyed a few shots of fireball and a half and egg sandwich before the harvest started.
Mikey and I tied off the first birds neck to a loose noose, Sarah got the video camera ready for filming and that’s when the life lessons began. Holding the duck by his wings I rested
his breast on the seasoned log, Mikey pulled firmly on the twine. I swung my machete down upon the unsuspecting duck with sorrow and joy. In one swift blow it was over, a second smaller slice to remove a little bit of remaining flesh; the body (only bleeding slightly) went to the bucket and the head to the ground still bound to the twine in Mikey’s hand. Sarah was only slightly mortified the event but did not scared away. There was very little movement from the body and after just a couple of minutes in the bucket to bleed out the lifeless semi white bird went to a hot bath for one minute to loosen the feathers from their strong hold and then hung by the foot to a nail to be plucked. The plucking process took the most time to accomplish and was very tedious. Mikey and I worked on the feathers for some time and it didn’t take long for Sarah to join in on the plucking. My wife continued to help us until the skin held no more feather. From the plucking station the bird went to a tray to have the insides removed. Mikey evacuated the chest cavity with little effort. We saved the liver and the heart to be eaten tomorrow. The feet were removed and hung to dry for later uses. From that station the bird went inside to be cleaned, quartered, cleaned again and then into the fridge to await its partner. Sarah bleached everything and Mikey and I prepared the next bird.
The second bird went just about the same as the first. I held the thin twine this time as
Mikey held the wings and machete. Sarah stayed inside to tend to the kids; she didn’t want to watch this time. There was a swing of the machete, body to bucket, head to the ground, hot bath, then to the nail to have only the breast feathers removed. The second bird was going to be skinned, cleaned, and then quartered. We only put a small incision along the breast bone and worked the flesh free by hand only using the knife for stubborn tissue connections. the wings were cut free to dry out as were the feet later on. Mikey cleaned the chest cavity on this one too and again the heart and liver were saved. The carcass was cleaned, quartered and cleaned again. Sarah, Mikey and I cleaned everything again with bleach, bagged all the unusables and started getting everything for cooking.
Its hard to explain the feelings I had during this ordeal. There wasn’t any pleasure, I think I just felt determination the most. I knew once everything started there was no going back. As soon as my arm fell toward the duck I knew that not just this ducks life was gone but so was the others. After the blow was landed it really felt like instinct took over and the cleaning process was just natural.
The ducks did taste great though and we will be having duck and vegetable soup for lunch tomorrow.
any questions let me know
Michael Trump
Goodnight and God bless.
Duck Breast
I know I haven’t written in a long while and I am sorry for that. Working nights really puts a damper on personal time. Now the title of this, “Duck Breast,” was chosen with much pride. My friends know I love to cook and have sought to try duck for some time now. I have wanted to catch a Muscovy duck to harvest and eat; that has proven difficult. With the holidays rapidly approaching, a better selection of meat is now showing up at the local supermarket. Duck and goose are very plentiful right now and should be until Christmas or so. Not wanting to spend too much money on something I have never tasted before; I selected a smaller duck to prepare at home. Choosing to duck was easy; they all looked the same in their white wrapper and the only difference was price. I brought the duck home put it in the fridge and started watching YouTube videos on many different ways to cook this once pretty bird. It was tough trying to decide weather or not to cook the whole bird or butcher it and prepare it in parts. After days of mouth watering studying I came to a personal consensus; I would de-breast it and remove the legs and thighs. I chose this method after watching Chef Ramsay prepare two separate duck breast in similar manner. I wanted to grill the breast but stayed way from that method for just starting out.
Duck has always been a treat to many societies except here in America for some reason. I guess it may be a delicacy here too but I never see it on any restaurants menus or in store freezers. Small farms seem to offer duck almost year round and can even pick up some egg layers too if you so choose. Back to the delicacy of duck; The French seem to love the stuff and the Chinese are known as awesome cookers and such. I tried to find some American ways of preparing duck; roasting it seems to be the only creative way we cook duck here. There are a few smoked duck videos and a couple other simple recipes. The Chef Ramsay videos proved to be the most appealing, plus I have some trust in his cooking, being that I have watched many of his cable and local TV cooking shows.
Peking duck is what is currently available everywhere right now and is the duck I prepared. I started off by fridge thawing it. After complete thawing I unwrapped our tasty treat and gave it a good all over rub and squeeze to find the good sources of meat. Breast, legs and thighs were it. The wings were almost meatless and so was the back. I removed the breast from the duck but left the skin attached to the meat. I flipped the duck over and palpitated the muscle tissue to get the best cut of thigh and leg. I left skin on them too. All that remained was the almost meatless carcass and the giblets.
Now I had four nice pieces of meat, two breast and two leg thigh quarters. The separate cuts of meat need to be prepared in different manners. The breasts were placed skin side down in a room-temperature ten inch cast-iron pan after being lightly seasoned with lemon pepper. I set the stove to medium low until some of the fat started to melt away. I then turned the stove up to medium high and let cook until the fist sign of meat juice surfaced on top of the cuts of meat. Mean while the oven was set to 350 and had the legs inside slowly cooking. All cooking started at the same time. Now I didn’t put slits in the breasts skin like recommended and didn’t realize it until just now as I am writing this. It okay though I guess. I didn’t leave the breast meat side down for long and place the cast iron pan in the oven with the legs. They stayed in for about eight minutes and I pulled them out and set them to rest over the ovens built in vent “back right burner on most stoves” with a lid on the pan I let the legs cook until the reached 165 degrees. I don’t use times that much since every cut of meat is different. Use your best judgment okay. Now after the sides were prepared I sliced up the breast into thick cuts and made up some nice looking plates. So to the best part, our first bite; yes “our” first bite. Sarah was very willing to try some. Cutting it with a knife was like cutting cool butter with a warm knife. The look of the meat was dark like beef, and looked liked it was about a medium well cook. I trimmed off the skin and small amount of remaining fat and dove in mouth first. The bite down was very pleasant; it wasn’t overly juicy and the texture was that of a perfect beef tender loin. I was taken back by the amazingness of the meat, as was my picky wife who doesn’t like beef all that much. She plowed though her hunk of meat like it was the fist time she had eaten in days. “note: we did use a wishishere sauce to dip the small nuggets of breast meat.” Our sides were as follows; corn on the cob, Italian cucumber salad, and potato salad. The Italian salad was a great compliment to the duck; the tanginess off set the salty smoothness of the duck. Both of the kids ate up their pieces too and well I don’t think it will be long before I pick up a duck or two from a local farm and do this again. If you haven’t tried duck ever or have only had it roasted whole I strongly recommend trying it as a duck breast steak with a wishishere dipping sauce “not a drowning sauce, a dipping sauce”
Try it tonight wont you.
Michael Trump 