Smoked Duck with Cranberry Mango Chutney

Smoked Duck

This takes 3 days to make. You will cook and serve on day 3. This can be a finicky dish to prepare, it is really best to make a dry run before you try to impress guests. Read all the instruction thoroughly before starting and do not skip any of the steps.

5-6 Lb Muscovy duck ( each duck serves about 4 ) make as many as you need
¼ cup salt per gallon water used to brine.
1 orange cleaned and cut into quarters
1 onion quartered
one large rosemary sprig per bird
fresh thyme, marjoram, garlic
Adobo seasoning ( a seasoning mixture of salt, garlic and oregano, wing it if you can't locate it)
pepper

hickory smoke chips

Thaw bird at least 4 days in advance of serving.

Day 1
remove from package, pull out any pin feathers, trim off the neck flap, and all excess fat from around cavity. Rinse clean. Often ducks found at supermarkets are pre-brined but continue as though it was not. If your duck is still a little frozen that will be ok, it will thaw.

If the bird you have has not had the skin pricked all over then you must do it. You need to prick the skin many times but only prick the skin and fat, do not pierce the flesh if you can manage. Often the pre-brined ducks are also pierced if this is the case skip this step.

Brine the bird. In a large tub or food safe bucket mix together ¼ cup salt per gallon water to cover the bird or birds. Before adding raw bird taste water, you want a pleasant saltiness, not overly saturated, make the brine to your taste. Add bird or birds. Keep cold , and brine for one day.

Day 2
after 24 hour brine, remove birds from brine drain pull the necks, livers, hearts and whatever else is in there out.

Pat dry.

Stuff cavity with the orange and onion quarters as well as a rosemary sprig. Tie the legs together and fold the wings back and over themselves.

Mix your herbs, garlic, pepper and Adobo in a bowl then liberally apply to the surface of the ducks. Place ducks on a roasting rack in the roasting pan you plan to cook them in. Do the back side first then the breast ( so the herbs don't fall off the side you will see.

This is a dry marinade stage, if you have a safe refrigerator that you can leave the ducks uncovered for 24 hours in do that. If not cover ducks keeping them elevated off the floor of the container so the juices do not soak the back let rest over night. You want the duck skin to dry out.




Day 3 -Day of Serving
soak the smoke chips or make 2 foil packs with the dry chips, pierce a few times and set aside.

About 7 hours before you serve your duck remove and let stand on counter. Light your smoker. We use a standard Weber BBQ to do this. I have cut a coffee can down to 2 inches tall and drilled out 1” holes in the bottom. This is the smoke pan. You need to light 8-10 coals Use a bricket chimney and NOT LIGHTER FLUID you do not want the ducks to taste like lighter fluid.

When the coals are ready pour them into the coffee can pan pull to the side in a location that you can access to add smoke chips as needed.

Place the rack right from your roasting pan in the smoker if it fits. If not place the duck directly on the rack. add a few chips cover tightly, open a vent a little to keep the air flow.

At this stage you are not cooking the duck you are adding the smoked flavor. So keep only enough coals in the smoke pan to create smoke not create heat. Add coals as needed. Add wood chips as needed.

Smoke duck for 2 hours.

Heat oven to 225 F remove the ducks from smoker and cover with a lid or with foil as tightly as you can. The duck will now slowly cook for 3.5 hours steaming off some of the fat. The more tightly covered the more fat will drain. Check them after 2 hours and drain the fat if it begins to accumulate in bottom. You don't want the ducks to touch it after it has rendered off. Keep tightly covered and remove from oven at 3.5 hours.

Let the duck rest for 45 minutes.

Heat oven to 375 F uncover ducks and place in the hot oven for another 40 min. This is the stage when you are crisping up the skin.

Carve the duck tossing out the fatty parts of the skin.

Serve with Mango Cranberry Chutney or a sauce of your choice.


Cranberry Mango Chutney

1 bag fresh cranberries picked through and cleaned
2 large mangoes peeled and chopped
1 medium apple peeled cored and chopped
1 whole sweet red pepper
1 ½ cup sugar
1 cup finely chopped onion
½ cup white vinegar
2 TB finely chopped ginger root
1 TB lemon juice
2 tsp curry powder
½ tsp each nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Combine everything in a large stainless or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered 40 min or until fruits are tender and mixture is thickened. Stir occasionally.

To can, ladle the hot mixture into sterilized jars fill to within ½” of rim to allow for head space. Process 10 min for ½ pint jars and 15min for pint jars.

Excellent as an accompaniment with poultry.