Killed my first duck. How should I cook it?

Crap, first hunt and you kill a pintail. Nice work, where you hunting?

I like to go salt and pepper on a whole plucked duck, cook on a wire rack above a tray until it is med-rare, take the fat from the tray while the duck is resting, and saute potatoes in the fat.

Season it and put a link of sausage in the cavity. You can also use apples or a variety of things. Brown it really well in the stove top. Then brown sausage then onions, bell peppers and whatever you usually use for your gravy’s. Then add water and throw it in the oven covered on 400. Check after 2 hours. If you can slide the breast meat off the cavity it’s done. Enjoy. That’s how we do it in Ville Platte at least.

All my ducks are cooked in either a gumbo (rarely) or a brown gravy.

Sooooo many folks undervalue the flavor of duck breast and just automatically divert to poppers, gumbo, or gravies. There is no comparison to those methods to the flavor of duck breast cooked steak-style in a black iron pot with a little canola oil seasoned with salt and pepper and finished with butter and garlic. Rest it for 10 minutes after cooking to medium rare. Even divers will taste similar to beef.

It really is about the cooking method. I can not stress this enough if you’ve never done it. I hadn’t before a couple years back. I’ll never go back to marinating ducks, or destroying them (IMO after cooking them this way) in gravies and the like. You would think the flavor of the breast will be just like it is cooking it every other way. It is not. I’ve never found another meat that tastes so different depending on how you cook it. Give it a try!

I like duck breast on the grill or just done in a pan with a little seasoning. BUT it’s also still good in gumbo and everything else. Doesn’t mean it’s wasting it or anything. Same goes for me with deer backstrap. I love it grilled rare like a steak, but I also like it fried or any other way.

first you make a roux?

I usually relegated duck to appetizer status and cook it one of two ways:

Duck nuggets wrapped in bacon
- cut duck breast into pieces the size of chick-fil-a nuggets
- marinate nuggets for italian dressing for 24 hours
- wrap each piece individually in bacon and hold with a toothpick
- grill for 20-30 minutes

Duck poppers
- same cut and marination steps as above
- cut jalopeno peppers into quarters and clean out most of the seeds
- smear cream cheese into the husk
- put duck nugget on top of cream cheese
- wrap the entire thing in bacon
- grill for 20 to 30 minutes

Any good Canada goose recipes? I've done poppers and put them in gumbo
but looking for other ideas.

i always pluck a big duck. smoking is my preference for cooking. coat with olive oil, generous amounts of sea salt and black pepper. quarter 2 oranges and stick cloves in them and put them in the cavity. smoke till 165 internal temp.