We recently got back from our annual duck hunting trip to North Dakota. It wasn’t exactly our most successful hunting trip up there, we had multiple days of 80 degree beautiful sunny, cloudless, no wind days – which while gorgeous and somewhat unseasonably warm, isn’t exactly great duck hunting weather. We had not one but two nights with incredible displays of Northern Lights. And we scratched out enough ducks to make what I think might now be my favorite duck recipe to date.
I made this recipe last year and liked it so much I wanted to bring it back this year because my dad wasn’t around to enjoy it last year and I knew he’d love it. This started with an idea to make duck in the style of Orange Chicken and morphed into using Bachan’s Japanese Barbeque Sauce for the glaze instead of my standard orange chicken sauce. I also really wanted to use the sweet potatoes that my Uncle Jake grew in his garden for the first time last year and somehow I decided these flavors went well together. Since it is a year from my inspiration, I don’t remember exactly where the inspiration came from but I am certainly glad it came because I LOVED this recipe. Since I was making it again for my dad to try, why not take picture so I could share it on the blog too!
The duck is pan-fried in a coating of seasoned flour before being glazed by the Bachan’s sauce and it ends up reminding me of how chicken gets glazed in good Asian take-out. It’s served over a base of creamy mashed sweet potatoes seasoned with a bit of ginger as a nod to the Asian-ish flavors.
My mom even helped herself to a small second helping – which if you know my mom and her thoughts on wild game is about the highest recommendation a recipe could receive! Although she did mention when I asked her about it that her favorite might have been the Greek-Style Goose Bowls that I made during Early goose earlier in the year. Guess, I’m going to have to repeat and blog that recipe too!
Here’s what you need:
Not pictured: salt and pepper, olive oil, garlic powder, flour, brown sugar, buttermilk (for marinating the duck) and scallions.
(Please give me a pass on the not pictured, I’m cooking at hunting camp and out of my normal kitchen, I forgot to unpack a few ingredients when I took the pic!)
The recipe for the duck scales up and down easily – we base how much duck we need on the amount and type of duck we have. Here’s how we think about servings:
- Large ducks like Mallard, Canvasback, Pintails – 1 per big eater like my Uncle, Cousin or Derek, or 2 smaller eaters like a Senior or kid.
- Medium ducks like Gadwalls – 1 per a medium eater like me
- Small ducks like Teal – 1 per light eater, think Seniors or kids, we planned 1 each for my parents
For this recipe we cooked 3 mallards, 1 gadwalls, and 2 teal.
As with most of my duck and goose recipes, we start the recipe the day before so we can put the duck breasts through my standard 2 step brine/marinate process. Soak the ducks overnight in a salt water brine (I don’t measure, I add and dissolve salt until it tastes like the sea.) Rinse the brine off and marinade in buttermilk for morning – I typically put it in the marinate about 6 AM before we go out hunting and take it out around 11 to 11:30 am when I start making lunch.
The duck breast can be either cut into bite sized pieces for the brine/marinate process or right before you cook depending on the time you have and what works best. I will note after the buttermilk marinate the duck breasts get a little lighter in color and it may be harder to identify the silver skin if you didn’t clean the whole breasts up really well before you brine/marinate them.
The first thing you want to start is the sweet potatoes. The sweet potato recipe was adapted from America’s Test Kitchen “Creamy Mashed Sweet Potatoes” recipe. I added ginger for a little nod to the Asian flavors and subbed brown for the white sugar in the recipe for the richer, molasses flavor it would bring.
To a pot add thinly sliced sweet potatoes, butter, cream, salt, pepper, brown sugar and ground ginger.
Cover and cook over low heat until the potatoes are tender and fall apart when stabbed with a fork. About 35-40 minutes. As the sweet potatoes start to warm up, they will release liquid which creates steam to help cook them.
Now start working on your duck. Cut it up into bite sized pieces.
Prepare your flour mixture by mixing flour, salt, pepper, ground ginger and garlic powder together. I like to put it in a bowl or plastic container with a lid so I can shake it up to coat the duck.
Add some duck to the flour – use your judgement on how much to add at one time based on the size of your container.
Close the lid and shake, shake, shake. Remove the duck from the flour, shake off the excess and set on a plate while you finish the rest. If you have a partner in the kitchen who can help you coat duck while you start frying go ahead, otherwise just get all the duck floured before moving on.
Heat a 12 inch skillet over medium heat and add enough oil to generously cover the bottom. Add enough duck to form a single layer in the pan. Cook for approximately 2 minutes until golden.
Flip and cook another 1-2 minutes on the 2nd side. Remember you can serve duck medium-rare, if you want to temp it don’t go over 160 (that would be fully cooked).
Remove the duck to a paper towel lined plate. Repeat with additional batches of duck until it is all cooked. Wipe out the pan and add additional oil between batches if you get a build up of excess flour.
When all the duck is cooked, wipe out the pan. Pour in the Bachan’s BBQ sauce – for serving 6 people we used the entire bottle (the standard grocery store bottle, not the Costco sized bottle).
Bring to a simmer. Reduce for a few minutes until it just about starts to thicken.
Add duck back to sauce and gently stir to coat. Continue cooking until the sauce thickens on the duck pieces and it looks nice and glazed.
By now your sweet potatoes should be fully cooked and fork tender.
They aren’t really pretty to look at. Add an additional couple tablespoons of cream and mash until smooth.
Serve the duck over a bed of mashed sweet potatoes.
- SWEET POTATOES:
- 6 T unsalted butter cut into 1 T pieces
- 5 T heavy cream, divided
- 2 t brown sugar
- 3 pounds sweet potatoes, sliced into ¼ inch thick slices
- 1 t ground ginger
- Salt
- Pepper
- DUCK:
- Duck breasts for 6 people, cut into bite sized pieces.
- Salt
- Buttermilk
- 1.5 c flour
- 2 t salt
- 1 t pepper
- 1 t ground ginger
- 1 t garlic powder
- Oil (canola, olive or avocado) for frying
- Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce, Original Flavor
- The night before brine the duck in a mixture of salt and water that tastes salty like the sea. The next morning, drain duck. Transfer to a fresh bag (or other container) and pour over enough buttermilk to cover.
- Add all sweet potato ingredients except 2 T cream to a sauce pan.
- Cover and cook over low heat until potatoes fall apart when pierced w a fork. Approximately 35-40 minutes.
- Remove from heat, add remaining 2 T cream. Mash with a potato masher until smooth.
- While the sweet potatoes are cooking prepare the duck. In a covered container, mix flour, salt, pepper, ginger and garlic powder.
- Drain duck from buttermilk. Working in batches, add duck to flour, shake container to coat. Shake off excess flour and place duck on a plate.
- Heat a 12 inch skillet over medium heat. Add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan.
- Fry duck in batches for 1-2 minutes per side until cooked to your liking (between 140-160 degrees). Remove to a paper towel lined plate until all batches are cooked. Wipe skillet out between batches if too much flour remains and starts to brown too much.
- Wipe out skillet.
- Add BBQ sauce and bring to a simmer (use your judgement on how much sauce to add if you made a little less duck than we did). Cook until it starts to thicken.
- Add duck back to skillet and gently stir to coat. Cook until the sauce nicely glazes the duck.
- Serve duck over a bed of mashed sweet potatoes.
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