My First Duck Roast

Traditionally the big Christmas dinner in Denmark is on Christmas Eve - and I guess most Danes would have duck roast.^[1] This year I decided to try my hand at a whole duck for the first time. Well, let me be frank: a few mistakes were made, so there's room for improvement ...

Since I was going to be cooking only for two I took the smallest duck I could find at the store, at 1.5 kg (~ 3 lbs). Traditionally the duck is stuffed with apples and prunes, but I decided to go for a different flavour: I stuffed it instead with onion, leek, and fresh sage. I closed it using a couple of wooden toothpicks. The skin was rubbed with generous amounts of salt.


One of the tricky parts is getting a crisp skin, while not drying out the meat. I read beforehand that a nice result should be obtained by roasting it first for 20-30 minutes at 225 C (450 F) with the breast up and then turning it over on the grid, filling a little water in the bottom of the pan and roasting at 160 C (320 F) for about 30 minutes per lb. This is exactly where I made my mistakes: for one thing, I don't think the early roasting at the higher temperature was sufficient. Worse, when I turned it over and poured water in the pan, the water reached the skin (because the grid was too low over the bottom of the pan). Consequently, the skin wasn't anywhere near crisp when the duck was roasted. I tried turning on the broiler for a some minutes, but I never got the skin quite right.

The meat, however, was delicious - I really liked the hint of sage. It was served with peeled, boiled potatoes, broiled green beans, red cabbage sauerkraut, gravy made from the drippings, salad (made from corn salad, cucumber, tomato, caper berries, and roasted pine nuts), and a pinot noir Burgundy wine with a very Christmas like label (click picture to enlarge).

For dessert this heavy flourless chocolate-brazil nut cake.

^[1] It's not uncommon in larger families to find both duck roast and pork roast.