Sichuan-Style Steamed and Roasted Duck

Here's a crazy duck recipe I've been sitting on for almost a decade before making - Chinese roasted duck, similar to Peking duck but with different seasoning.  An incredibly popular dish in Chinese restaurants, this is similar to the duck you see hanging in windows in Chinatowns around the world.  Making this dish clued me in to what I was actually looking at - a duck par-cooked to start the process, then basted in a sweet syrup and left to air-dry to ensure a crispy skin before being roasted.  This means that those hanging ducks, while edible, are only part of the way done.  While the process of this recipe is very similar, there are a few things I just won't be able to do, such as cook the duck in a traditional hung oven where it can be roasted over a wood fire.  I'll be trying this recipe again with a different recipe, but this was pretty delicious in its own right.  Not quite the lacquered, crispy skin that made the dish famous in Beijing, but it was really good, and a lot of fun to make.

After a bit of digging, I discovered that the flavors used to make this duck recipe are less like that of Peking duck and more like that of a Sichuan dish, Xiang Su Quan Ya.  That dish is very similar to this but fried at the end rather than roasted, and omitting the glaze.  So this recipe is somewhere between the Sichuan and Peking cooking method, but much more like the Sichuan flavorings given the use of Sichuan peppercorns.

If you haven't cooked one before, duck is really fatty.  There are a lot of things that are done to duck to try to get some of the fat out of it.  You can roast it low and slow to render out the fat while cooking.  Or you can do what the Chinese do, blow air under the skin (somehow, I can only conjecture how this is done) to loosen it and then savor every delicious bit of the crispy skin with a hint of the fluffy, roasted duck fat underneath.  I like the pre-steaming method of this recipe, similar to the other typical Chinese step of boiling briefly but done with more of an emphasis on releasing the fat in addition to shrinking and tightening the skin for a better crispness.  Plus, this duck is crammed so full of aromatic herbs, fruits, and vegetables in this step that even if you put nothing on it and ate it steamed, it would be delicious.

My recipe will modify the process slightly from the original recipe, despite my following the original more closely, to fix a few problems I found with the methods.  It also explains how to make your own Chinese 5-spice, which is amazing but POWERFUL.  A little goes a long way.

Chinatown Steamed and Roasted Duck
Recipe adapted from Tyler Florence, "Food 911: Chinese Take-Out"

• 1 whole (4 to 5 pound) duck 
• 2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder, recipe follows (note: very powerful, don't use too much)
• 2 teaspoons sugar 
• 2 teaspoons salt 
• 5 big slices fresh ginger, cut in 1/8" – 3/16” slices
• 4 garlic cloves 
• 1/2 bunch green onions 
• 1 tangerine, peel cut in big strips 
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar 
• 1/2 cup honey 
• 1/2 cup soy sauce

The ingredients, including homemade five-spice powder (recipe follows)

To diminish the fat and produce a crispy skin on your duck, begin by trimming the excess fat from the neck and body - yank out any large pieces from the butt end, basically.  Rinse the duck, inside and out, and pat dry thoroughly with paper towels.  Whether using your own mix or store-bought five-spice, combine the Chinese five-spice, sugar, and salt in a small bowl.  Rub the spice mixture all over the duck, inside and out.  The salt and five-spice powder will draw some of the moisture from the duck so that the spices penetrate.  Stuff the duck cavity with the aromatics: the ginger, garlic, green onions, and tangerine peel.  Fold the wing tips back under the duck and tie the legs together with kitchen string, tucking the tail inside the legs if it's long enough (see picture).  Score the duck breast a few times, piercing the skin but not the flesh.  This scoring step is crucial!

Rub the spice mix inside and out, then toss the aromatics together and stuff them into the duck.  Tell your taste buds to pack a bag, because they're going on vacation.

Score the skin, WITHOUT scoring the flesh.  See how deep I got the cuts?  This lets the fat literally melt out when you steam it.  A really sharp boning knife helps here.

Place a roasting pan on the stovetop over 2 burners and fill with 2-inches of water, turn the heat to medium. Set a V-rack insert inside the pan and lay the duck on the rack, breast-side up. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Steam the duck for 45 minutes or more, checking the water level periodically. Steaming the duck first melts away some of the fat and shrinks the skin.

Not really captured too well, I wrapped a giant roasting pan in giant aluminum foil, crimping around the edges.  I recommend doing this with the pan cold, for reasons that became obvious to me shortly after starting.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. 

In a small saucepan combine the vinegar, honey, and soy sauce over low heat. Cook and stir for 5 minutes until thick. The duck will be lacquered with the sweet glaze, which caramelizes during roasting, making the skin crisp and brown. 

Whatever you do, don't walk away from the glaze while you're reducing it.  This was seconds after I noticed a near catastrophe and pulled the heat , but you can see along the inside rim of the pot how high up this sticky mess bubbled before subsiding

Take the foil off the duck, remove the rack with the duck, and pour out the water and all the fat that has rendered out (I saved this liquid and ran it through a fat separator, keeping the delicious duck fat, with intentions of making duck fried rice later this week - I recommend you do the same!)  Put the rack with the duck back on a platter or cutting board.  Baste the duck with the vinegar mixture, until all the skin is completely coated in the glaze.  Let it dry to the point that none is dripping off the duck any more - feel free to let this air-dry in the traditional style, hanging if you're creative, for as much as a day!  Now place some parchment or aluminum foil on the bottom of your roasting pan, return rack with duck to pan, and stick the whole thing in the oven.

Baste that bird!  Give it a coat, let it sit for a few minutes, then give it another coat for good measure.

Roast the duck for 1 hour, tenting breast with foil if it gets too dark.  If you're not worried about burning the glaze to the bottom of the pan, feel free to baste periodically with any remaining glaze to set in a deep mahogany color.  I did this, but it ended up making a burnt-on mess that I had to resolve by pouring in liquid, which in turn compromised my duck's crispiness.  The legs will wiggle easily when it's done.  Carve and serve. 

The finished duck.  I ended up pouring a bunch of liquid in the bottom of the pan to prevent dripped baste from burning to the bird, but do as I say, not as I do.  My directions avoid this problem.

Garnish with green onions, and sesame seeds, and serve with rice and some kind of vegetable

Homemade Chinese Five-Spice Powder

• 1 tsp. ground Szechwan pepper
• 1 tsp. ground star anise
• 1-1/4 tsp. ground fennel seeds
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground white pepper

First of all, never mind that there are seven ingredients here.  Apparently salt and pepper don't count.  Use whole ingredients if you can for maximum freshness, and grind in a spice mill or coffee grinder.  Mix all ingredients in an airtight jar and store in a cool place.

If you happen to cook WAY too much like me, you may actually have all of these ingredients on-hand.  So next time you don't have five-spice, you can actually make your own

Grind all ingredients finely, one at a time to get the amounts right, and stir.  That's it!