I bought a duck
Originally posted by Hackimer@ Rob,Aug 2 2004, 04:27 PM
\"Ralan Today, 09:09 PM Post #2
That's sick! \"
Ralan, while I am having a bit of an ethical dillema, since she's such a cute little creature, it is a fact of nature that every animal product we do eat came from something alive at one time. Therefore it is in my experiential interest to kill a live animal, cook it, and eat it. Anything less would be hypocritical of me as an omnivore and also as a chef.
CaryP, I love the title of the second book, but it's not recipes that elude me. Although thanks, what i'm looking for is a step by step breakdown of how to turn it from my friend and pet the duck into dinner. Tips for the fattening, death and feathering/eviscerating.
Any hints along those lines?
Rob,
Don't name the duck or allow you or your family to play with it like a pet. It's not a pet. It's food. Yes, it's a living thing, but ultimately it's a duck i.e. food. If you can't kill it, I'd be willing to bet there are several places (Chinese restaurants, slaughter houses, etc. in NYC) that would slaughter and dress out your duck. If you're up to killing and dressing out your duck, I can help. Fattening can be accomplished by feeding it corn. I'm sure you can find dried corn in NYC. Ducks generally prefer dried grain to "moist" grain, so you need something dried out. Rice also works, but corn gives it a sweeter flavor if you plan on fattening it up over a number of weeks. You won't find this in a supermarket or grocery store (except for the rice). I don't know where to look in NYC, but NYC has everything under the sun. You may have to go to a pet store and get some duck/bird feed. Tell the pet store that you're looking for duck food, I'm sure they can help you. The method for killing the duck would be a) wring its neck - grab it by the head and spin its body around hard and fast - the duck will flap its wings and twitch wildly at first, just keep whirling it around until it stops (the head may come off, but that's okay) B) cut its neck/behead it with a very sharp knife - it won't like this either and may flop around spraying blood all over the place, or c) the preferred method is to hold its body, while smashing its head against something hard (concrete, metal, hard wood etc.) The last method described is probably the most humane way, as the duck should die instantly if you give it a good whack on the first pass. Yes, it may have some residual response even after it's dead. Ever seen a chicken run around after its head is cut off? Same principal. I'd tell you to shoot it in the head, but you probably can't shoot a firearm in NYC, and you may not own a gun. Once the duck is dead, don't try and pluck all the feathers. It's a nightmare and you never get all the feathers, unless you want to keep the skin for oven or pot roasting. If you do want to keep the skin, you'll have to pluck it. After plucking, a good method of getting rid of the pin feathers is to burn them off. A good butane burner flame should do the trick, but it smells to high heavens. A better method for plucking is to get a pot of hot wax, dip the dead bird in the wax, and get it all wax coated. Once the wax cools and dries, you can peel the wax off and most of the feathers should come with it. This alleviates feathers all over the place, but still doesn't get all the pin feathers off. I prefer skinning. Once the bird is dead, you need to dress it out. First you cut the head, wings and feet off. Then you have to gut it. A very sharp knife is a necessity. Cut the abdomen open (you can feel the soft belly) near the bottom of the soft abdomen area. Open the area up with your knife. You'll need to pull all the internal organs out, and I mean everything - intenstines, liver, heart, lungs, gizzard - everything. You accomplish this by pulling everything out with your hand until all you feel are the inside of its ribs.. You can eat the liver, heart and gizzard if you're up to that. Very tasty. But you'll have to clean out the gizzard to cook and eat it. The gizzard is an organ that pulverizes pebbles and other hard food ingested for digestion. You may want to pass on the gizzard. It's tought and chewy and is not as tasty as the heart and liver. If you're not sure how to clean the gizzard, throw it away, it's not worth the hassle, and could spoil the rest of the duck if it's cooked without being thoroughly cleaned. Once the duck is dressed out, you'll need to skin it or pluck it. I've already gone over plucking so I'll cover skinning here. Now that you have dressed the duck, it should be fairly easy to skin it. A sharp knife is a must again. Begin with the neck area. The head should already be removed, so just make a good slit from the top of the neck area into the breast section. A domestic duck should allow you to peal most of the skin off fairly easily. The sharp knife is needed to cut away the skin from the "sticky areas" around the wings and legs and parts of the back. You can leave some skin on if you want to. The fat underneath adds flavor and helps to make a gravy if one is desired. Once the duck is skinned, you need to marinade it, but you sound like you have that under control.
Sorry for the long post. Hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.
Cary
