I have a bone to pick with the wired barbecue community. A duck bone, to be specific.
Rant, begins here…
When I last cooked a barbecue duck, you’ll recall I noticed a shortage of recipes for just plain barbecued, (aka NOT Asian-style) duck. Not easy! Unless you want Peking Duck, too bad for you. Someone should translate that into Chinese for me.
But this time, I decided I indeed wanted a duck with some Asian flavors. Months ago, I noticed a recipe for honey ginger duck that sounded really good, and made a note to give it a try. But when I went back to my source, poof! The recipe was gone.
Thus began my search for a killer honey ginger duck recipe, and I discovered… um, wait a minute … what the hell? I discovered practically nothing. WHAT?
Sure, they don’t have hooves or snouts, but I don’t know what ducks did to deserve this kind of treatment. Did you know Bing generates 2.6 million more search results for barbecue shrimp than duck. Are you kidding me? With all due respect to “Benjamin Buford Blue, but people call me Bubba,” you put shrimp on a skewer, you cook `em, you eat `em.
Daffy would say it’s despicable!
And worse, most of the duck recipes out there are more Wok than Kamado. Saucy, soupy duck recipes that you serve with a spoon. I’m not knocking them, but where are the barbecuers?
Here’s where: Posting 1.9 million recipes for “Peking duck.” Sigh.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Peking duck. But I just don’t see any need to cook that myself. I can get terrific Peking duck at any of the amazing authentic Chinese food places in Seattle’s very awesome international district. Why compete with that?
So, if it must be me experimenting with duck recipes, fine. But I’m calling out you other barbecue nerds: Duck deserves better than this. Get on it, people!
Ok, rant over. Here’s the recipe … for DUCK! (Not shrimp).
For people looking for something to eat other than shrimp kabobs.
The Marinade
I did what I typically do and found about two or three near-miss marinade recipes for duck with honey and ginger. They all had a similar base of ginger mixed with melted honey butter, then some sort of citrus. So that’s where I started, too.
I used equal parts butter and creamed honey, to which I tried both lime juice and lemon juice. But the winner? Lime Margarita Mix. Yeah, you read it right. We had a bottle of this stuff in the refrigerator, and I decided ‘what the heck,’ and mixed it with some of the honey butter. Wow! I was sold on it immediately.
I then took the base mixture and experimented with varying levels of salt, pepper, soy sauce, Mirin, basil and garlic. I decided ‘basil in, garlic out.’ And slowly added soy and Mirin until I thought the flavor was just right.
Here’s the final result (enough for one 4lb duck ):
In a bowl, mix into a paste:
- 3 large basil leaves finely chopped
- 2 tsp of ground ginger
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp water
In a saucepan, heat then simmer for 5 minutes:
- ¼ cup creamed honey
- ¼ cup unsalted butter
- 1 Tbs of Lime Margarita mix
Cool, then combine with ginger/basil
Then add:
- ¼ tsp of pepper
- ½ tsp Mirin
- 1 tsp soy sauce
Bag, and refrigerate the ducks with the Marinade. Mine marinated for 4 hours, but clearly could have soaked longer. (You should know that I was actually a bit suspicious of the marinade when I was done with my lab work. For a moment I thought it tasted a bit like a melted Starburst fruit chew. But that was not the case after cook. The flavor after a long, slow barbecue was a great compliment to the duck.)
I slow cooked the duck at 200 degrees on the Kamado over indirect heat for about 4 and a half hours. Then I cranked the heat up to 300 degrees and kept my eye on the bird until the skin looked dark and crispy. Probably about another 30 to 45 minutes.
Don’t forget my tips, per my last posting on duck, on how to deal with the large quantities of fat drainage.
My one last recommendation: Ducks are kind of scrawny. For the second time, I made only one duck, and for the second time, I wish I had made two or three.
Give it a try folks, and let me know how it turns out for you.
I love duck!