Hickory Smoked Whole Duck
This was a lazy rainy Sunday project. I was inspired by the ventures of a fellow foodie and their slow cooked duck operation( Julie's duck) I have to give credit for my mother who ordered me this fantastic Weber brand charcoal grill. This is essentially a uber-slow cooked bird with hickory smoke over the course of 5+ hours.
So, I had this whole duckling kicking around in the freezer since winter, and we recently ran out of stuff to eat so I defrosted it in our Coca-Cola brand refrigerator over the weekend. I stuffed it with the following:
1 head of garlic, sliced laterally
1 lemon, quartered
1 small red onion, halved
1 yellow onion, halved,
1 sprig of pineapple sage (it's even better than it sounds)
1 sprig of rosemarry
Salt
Pepper
To cook it I used the minion method, which is basically lighting a small handful of charcoal briquettes and then sitting them on top of a larger pile of unlit briquettes. This produces a low and slow heat that cooks the duck, which is safe on the far side of the grill so that it cooks with indirect heat. I of course liberally added wet hickory chips to the fire which made the bird laquered and beautiful brown.
Duck fat is not like fat from a traditional animal like a pig or a cow. Duck fat is ambrosial gold; almost like the spermacatae vomited up by the ancient sperm whale and horded by some grimy Nantucket rube. But better!
