XH and I made duck a l'orange using Julia Child's recipe for Thanksgiving dinner once. It was quite good. Remember you will need 1 duck per 2-3 people.

Here is a link that might be useful: Julia's Duck a l'orange

Duck was on sale for $1.99 a lb plus a $2.00 discount.

I bought three.

There will be duck for Christmas. Not sure what to make yet.

dcarch

Julia's recipe for duck a l'orange is still the best! Have tried maybe ten and always return to hers.

With a small family, we often have duck for a holiday meal. Here's a link to the Williams and Sonoma recipe I use. I don't use lavender honey or lavender, just regular honey. I'll bet a small amount of rosemary would have the same effect as lavender, if you like rosemary, which I do. Duck is so dang greasy. I just use thinned marmelade for a sauce. I often stuff the duck with some apple and onion pieces, or orange pieces.

Here is a link that might be useful: Duck with lavender honey

Here's my favorite (foolproof) way of cooking duck.

Bear in mind there isn't much meat on a duck; one duck will feed two hungry adults. If you're making it just as a side for people to have a taste, then it might serve 4 to six.

The only ducks I’ve ever seen in a market are frozen Long Island ducklings. (Technically, that’s a White Pekin duck, same variety as the one in the AFLAC commercials.) The following recipe is for that sort of duck, not for a wild duck. Purists will insist that you cook the duck breast and the duck legs separately, cooking the legs medium well and the breast rosy-pink rare. This recipe from The Joy of Cooking is simpler than that, and will produce juicy breast meat with crispy skin. Ducks have an enormous amount of fat under the skin. This recipe allows most of that fat to escape. Don’t discard the fat! Store it in a clean jar in the freezer. It’s great for making roux and frying potatoes. --The hardest part of this recipe is waiting for the duck to thaw. Take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge, still in its plastic wrapper, about 3 or 4 days prior to cooking. If it’s still frozen, put it in a pot in the sink and run cold water over it for a while. Not much meat on a duck; one duck feeds two adults. You can cook as many ducks as your pocketbook allows and freeze the cooked ducks in individual Ziplock plastic bags, to be nuked as you need them later.. I’ll often cook a few ducks at Christmas and have it available for people to sample, in addition to a turkey or other bird. Duck is sweet and rich. It’s most definitely a splurge, but a worthwhile one. This takes about 4 hours to cook, but you’re not doing anything most of the time--it’s a very easy recipe, and the results are spectacular.

Crispy Roast Duck

1 duckling, 4 ½ to 5 ½ lbs, thawed
Salt
Preheat the oven to 250˚ and place an oven rack in the center of the oven. Remove the duck from its plastic wrapper and rinse under cold water, then pat dry with paper towels. Rub a little salt in the cavity, and sprinkle a little on the skin. Remove any excessive fat from around the opening and the neck. With a sharp paring knife or a skewer, make 20 or 30 small incisions in the skin into the fat. Hold the knife parallel to the skin so you penetrate the skin into the fatty layer, but you don’t want to penetrate the flesh.
If you have a v-rack for a roasting pan, place the rack in the pan and place the duck, breast side down, on the rack. (But if you don’t have a v-rack, don’t worry. Just place the duck breast side down in the pan.) Place the pan in the oven and roast for 3 hours. Yes, three hours. Every hour check the duck and prick the skin a little more to let more fat escape. After three hours, drain the fat out of the pan (don’t discard it--it’s great to cook with) and turn the oven up to 350˚, and turn the duck breast side up. Roast for another 45 minutes. Remove to a platter and let the duck sit for 10 minutes before carving. You can make a gravy out of the juices and bits in the pan if you want.
If you don’t have a v-rack, you can cook the duck without one but the skin won’t be as crispy. It’ll still taste great, though.
Serve with whatever wine you like; the meat is hearty enough to stand up to a full bodied red like a Pinot Noir or Cabernet, but if you prefer a lighter red like a Zinfandel or a good white, go for it.

I ended up making the Julia Child recipe. I hate to say it, but unfortunately, none of us liked the result. The meat was tough and had no particular flavor. I don’t know what we did wrong. It was not dry: so it was not overcooked. Just chewy. We followed every instruction to the letter. Maybe it was undercooked, but we pricked it in the thigh as the instructions said and the juices ran clear, so we let it rest outside the oven while I finished the orange sauce. After it rested a while we saw more juices coming out that were pink, so maybe it was actually not done. Though the meat slices had no pink showing. Considering how much trouble this was, with making the stock for the sauce and all, I don’t think we will be repeating this. My husband is very good at roasting turkey or chicken, so he did that part. I did the stock and the sauce: again, following everything to the letter. It was nothing special. I should have just made gravy from the stock and pan drippings: THAT I know how to do. We probably just didn’t know how to do it right: though what the problem was, I don’t know.

Thanks for all your help: It's rare for us to have a complete failure, but this was disappointing. We'll blame Julia....

The best part of dinner: we all really liked drinking the port we bought for the sauce. :)

I am in the middle of roasting a duck, using instructions from The Hungry Mouse, but I have no idea at this point how it will turn out. I have about three hours left to go. Meanwhile we have been trying to do some landscaping today and yesterday, but at 79 degrees outside, it is almost too hot. We got rid of the grapevine yesterday and will pave some of the ground north of the apple tree so that we can put bromeliads and orchid cactus (epiphyllum) there, as they will require shade, and that is about the only shady part of the yard available. At least I am roasting the duck at 300 degrees right now, and so it is not heating up the kitchen too much. At the end, I have to roast it at 400 degrees for 5-7 minutes, however. I am also planning to change the halogen lighting I have in the kitchen to LED, as the halogen lights are way too hot.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

Lars

No matter how, the first delicacy to eat is the crispy roast skin.

I use Ina Garten's method, first cooking the duck in water, then roasting at high heat until the skin is crispy. It's the method I settled on after raising 32 (yeah, I know, I'm excessive) white Pekin ducks a couple of years ago.

Roast Duck
(Ina Garten)

2 ducks (5 to 6 pounds each), innards and wing tips removed
6 quarts canned chicken broth
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Allow the ducks to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes. With a fork, prick the skin all over, especially the legs, without piercing the meat, which will allow the fat to drain off while the ducks cook.

Meanwhile, in a stockpot large enough to hold two ducks, heat the chicken broth with 1 tablespoon of salt until it boils. Add the ducks very carefully and bring the broth back to a boil. If there isn’t enough broth to cover the ducks, add the hottest tap water to cover. Place a plate on top of the ducks to keep them submerged. When the broth comes back to a boil, lower the heat and simmer the ducks for 45 minutes.

Skim off enough duck fat from the top of the stock to pour a film on the bottom of a large roasting pan. This will keep the ducks from sticking while they roast. Carefully take the ducks out of the stock, holding them over the pot to drain. Place them in the roasting pan, pat the skin dry with paper towels, and sprinkle each with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. (Be sure your oven is very clean or it will smoke!) Roast the ducks for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow them to rest, covered with aluminum foil, for 20 minutes. Serve warm.

I enjoyed the ducks very much, but have not used this method for wild ducks, only the domestic ones.

Annie

Sometimes I think it is the duck itself. We've had delicious duck some years and "meh" duck other times, and no difference in the cooking method. Perhaps different breeds, different feeds, different methods of raising them . . . I dunno I almost always buy them from the same meat market where I live but since the last two were just so so (after a really good one the first time) I don't know what to do. I need to find a good duck supplier!

I have used this recipe from Epicurious with good results for our NYE dinner. Just be sure your duck is fully defrosted. Last year we couldn't find them and got it a little late. Darn, this thing is frozen like a rock. I will need to bring it down tomorrow morning to make sure it's good to go by Tuesday.

Here is a link that might be useful: Crisp Roast Duck

I agree with Annie. Ina's duck is the best that I've tried.

Hmmm. We must have three hundred ducks on our pond this morning, but I have never prepared wild duck. Probably gamier tasting. Suggestions for recipes welcome. Has anyone tried the above suggestions with wild duck?

Check out Hank Shaw's site - I loved his sausage, and others have recommended his site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hank Shaw