How to cook wild duck in the oven

Wild duck meat is highly valued due to its usefulness and unusual taste. Wild duck on the table is a rare product, as it is almost impossible to buy.

Wild duck in the oven

More often, wild duck is prepared by hunters or those who were able to purchase it at the market. The peculiarity of the meat is its spicy taste. This is why it is so important to properly prepare the bird and marinate it. Due to the fact that wild ducks feed on fish, their meat acquires a specific taste.

To make wild duck delicious, you need to use proven cooking recipes. It is not recommended to prepare wild duck soups; they can be fried, stewed and baked. The broth can be cooked using duck giblets.

How to Prepare a Wild Bird

Like any bird, if it is not dressed, you need to pluck the feathers and remove the insides. Rinse the carcass thoroughly, both inside and outside. Cut off the paws, neck, wings. Dry the carcass with a napkin. The final stage of preparing wild duck is searing over a burner.

Residues of soot may remain on the duck and will need to be washed off. Searing will remove any remaining feathers from the carcass.

If the bird is purchased, you should skip these points. The duck will need to be washed, cleaned, if there are partial remains of feathers, singed. If you plan to bake the whole duck, it is simply dried and marinated. If you fry the duck in pieces, you need to cut it into portions. Rinse the pieces and dry.

There is nothing complicated when preparing the bird; it must be clean and gutted, according to the recipe. The entrails, heart, liver, and navel are removed. You can use them to prepare rich broths and pates.

The intestines are thrown away. The head, legs, and wings are fed to animals or duck soups are cooked. First courses have a specific taste; special recipes are needed for them.

By cutting up a carcass correctly, thrifty housewives do not waste anything in the kitchen, even in the case of game.

How to remove a specific smell

Inexperienced housewives avoid wild duck because of its specific smell. If you cook it without pre-processing, the meat will taste like fish.

Some people like it, but others are discouraged from cooking duck meat. To avoid an unpleasant taste, you need to do the following procedure:

Lightly simmer the carcass in boiling water for about 5 minutes, or place it on a baking sheet with water inside the oven. Turn on the oven for 7-10 minutes, turning the duck once. Under the influence of steam, part of the specific odor will disappear.
Residual fishy odors are masked by marinating in special spices and seasonings. As a result, duck tastes no different from poultry.

Due to the natural value of the bird, its consumption will benefit the body. Adherents of hunting cuisine, having prepared their prey, will be pleased with the result. If everything is done correctly and not in a hurry, the poultry meat will be juicy, aromatic and not tough. The time spent on preparing game is justified and makes the hunter very happy.

If the duck is baked, it will not lose its golden crust. When fried, it will also brown. When stewed, the duck is saturated with its own fat, the meat becomes juicy and tender. The boiled or oven-aged duck is cooled, chopped or left whole.

Having dealt with the unpleasant wild duck smell, you can begin preparing dishes according to the selected recipes.

How to cook domestic and wild duck

You need to marinate it longer than usual, since wild duck may have a specific smell that not everyone likes. You can marinate it for duck or for at least 5 hours. If a regular duck is marinated for 3 hours, then a wild duck needs to be marinated much longer. To make the meat tender, you need to properly prepare the marinade. Here's how to cook wild duck at home to ensure the meat is tender:

- Before cooking, you must pluck it, remove hairs with tweezers, and even heat it over the tile. Be sure to remove the insides. Of course, the tenderness of the meat depends on the age of the bird, but you can make it softer by using a special marinade. You can also keep a domestic duck in it. The simplest recipe is to dilute a prepared bag of spices in dry white wine, pour it over the meat and marinate for a day.

Wild duck can be marinated with the following ingredients:

- lemon sauce. To do this, you need to mix a small amount of lemon juice and vinegar with water, pour it over the duck and cook the next morning;

- in pomegranate and blackberry juice mixed with red wine and spices. This duck turns out very tender and tasty.

How to marinate a duck for roasting in the oven if it is homemade? To do this, you can use one of the following recipes:

- a packet of ready-made marinade, which is mixed with vinegar and lemon juice and the meat is marinated for 3 hours. However, you may not always like the taste, and the aroma of spices may overpower the smell of natural duck meat;

- in lime-apple sauce with a little mint. To do this, you need to cut 4 limes into halves, the same number of sour apples and marinate the duck. Then the duck is washed, apples and prunes are placed in the middle and baked in the oven or on the grill. However, if you cook duck on a wire rack, you need to place a tray underneath, as the fat will drain;

What is the best way to marinate duck?

The main ingredient in pickling is salt. The whole carcass or pieces are generously rubbed with it. Salt gives meat not only flavor, but also makes it soft and dries out moisture. As for spices and seasonings, they are usually chosen according to individual characteristics - some like it spicier. For some, it’s more aromatic, while for others, black and red pepper in the marinade is enough.

To get rid of the fishy taste, you can add seasonings with a specific flavor - ready-made mixtures, spices for wild duck. You can take the following fragrant herbs:

Cooking poultry in the oven

The pre-marinated duck is placed in a baking sleeve or wrapped in food foil. If you plan to cook several ducks at once, they can be wrapped together in a large piece of foil. Do not throw away the remaining marinade; it can be useful at the final stage of baking.

Duck with vegetables in the oven

The roasting time of the carcass depends on the size and type of wild duck. There are more than 100 varieties of them in nature. Large ones will take longer to cook, small ones faster. The cooking time is affected by the age of the duck - young birds cook faster, but with older game you need to tinker.

The standard baking option involves keeping the carcass inside the oven for 35-40 minutes.
Then you will need to cut the foil on top and twist it on its sides to form a basket.
The open duck is cooked for another 20 minutes. Now you will need to check the readiness of the carcass.
If the skin is well pierced and no bloody juice flows from it, the game is ready. Another very important point is to let the duck brown.

If a lot of juice forms in the foil, you can remove it with a spoon. Lightly pour the juice over the duck and bake until golden brown. The game baked in this way is sprinkled with lemon juice, covered with herbs and vegetables and served. According to the rules of wild duck, recipes for cooking in the oven do not involve anything complicated.

Wild duck goes very well with homemade marinades, baked potatoes or boiled rice. The whole duck is served to the table. To serve, it is cut into portions with special scissors.

If the wild duck is well baked, the meat easily comes off the bone and simply melts in your mouth.

Duck stewed with sour cream and ketchup

Ingredients:

duck – 1 kg;
onions – 2 pcs.;
sour cream – 250 g;
ketchup – 100 g;
salt - to taste;
garlic – 5 cloves;
fresh ginger – 0.5 tsp;
red pepper - a pinch.

Cooking method

Wash the duck, dry it, cut into portions.
Place in a greased frying pan. Turning over, fry until golden brown.
Peel the onion, chop finely, mix with meat. When it is fried, pour in a little hot water to cover the duck. Simmer over low heat for 1 hour.
Mix sour cream with ketchup, place in a frying pan, and mix with meat. Season with salt, add chopped ginger and pepper, and squeeze the garlic through a press. Cook covered for another 20-30 minutes.
Sprinkle the finished duck stewed with sour cream and ketchup with chopped herbs.

Wild duck in a slow cooker

Modern technologies make it possible to prepare hunting dishes with less time. If the usual cooking of game in a cauldron takes a lot of time.

Wild duck in a slow cooker

In a slow cooker it cooks very quickly. The prepared pieces of poultry are placed in a multicooker bowl, where you first need to add a little vegetable oil. A lot of onions are laid out on top; they will give the bird juiciness, softness and a special aroma.

If desired, you can add pieces of carrots, sweet peppers or tomatoes. Garlic is added to the duck at the final stage, since its aroma will disappear during cooking.

Fans of spicy dishes can add a couple of pieces of chili pepper. Since the duck is marinated in the slow cooker, there is no need to salt it.

If there aren’t enough spices, you can add a little to your liking:

Turn on the multicooker to stewing mode and forget about it, depending on the model of the kitchen machine for 1.5-2 hours.
After this time, open the lid of the multicooker, assess the degree of readiness of the game, chop into pieces; if they are soft, the duck is ready.
If the meat is raw, turn on the stewing mode again. This happens very rarely, when the wild duck is very old. Basically, one mode of the “Extinguishing” program is enough.
Remove the finished pieces from the multicooker onto a dish or portion plates and serve with a side dish, herbs, and vegetables.

Wild duck baked in the oven

Wild duck in the oven turns out tender and soft. Lingonberry jam favorably emphasizes the taste of game, making it richer.

Ingredients:

black pepper;
lingonberry jam;
wild duck – 1700 g;
sea salt – 4 tbsp. spoons.

Preparation:

Trim excess fat from the gutted carcass. Rub the outside and inside generously with salt and pepper. Place a roasting rack on a baking sheet. Place the duck.
Preheat the oven. 230 degree mode. Place the baking sheet. Bake for an hour and a half. Every half hour, pour over the released fat.
Serve the bird with lingonberry jam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwhEt4jHM0w&t=69s

Baked wild duck with apples

Pickled game is stuffed inside with sour apples. Simirenko, White Nalivka, and Antonovka apples are well suited for this purpose. You can use any sour apples. For piquancy, housewives often add a pear cut into slices:

Sew up the peritoneum with thread or pin it with toothpicks. Cover the bottom of the duckling pan with foil or grease it with vegetable oil, and place the stuffed game there. Place in the oven for an hour and a half.
Periodically water the wild duck with the juice formed in the ducklings.
Adherents of hunting cuisine with a gourmet taste can add a sprig of tarragon to the duck roast. You can also pour lemon juice on top.

To get a flavorful side dish, place potato wedges around the edges of the game 20-30 minutes before it’s ready. Moreover, there is no need to clean it. Simply wash, cut into 4 pieces, add salt and bake. The potatoes will be saturated with duck juice and fat. Apples and spices will fill it with a special aroma.

This duck is served on a large platter, with game placed in the center and potatoes along the edges. Slices of ripe tomato and sprigs of basil placed around the edges will add bright notes to the dish.

In any serving, freshly cooked duck will conquer everyone with its taste and aroma.

Useful tips

Wild duck with prunes

They pluck the duck in the yard or on the balcony. If you do this in the kitchen, you should be prepared for the possibility that feathers may fly around the kitchen and there will be an unpleasant odor. This must be done carefully, put the feathers in a bag, and periodically wash your hands and the duck.
When searing game over a fire, to avoid burning the skin, it must first be rubbed with flour or coarse bran.
When cutting up game brought from hunting, you need to remove the shot, otherwise someone will get it when eating the duck. Eating duck with shot is unsafe; you can break a tooth.
If there is very little time for marinating, you can not marinate it for a long time, but simply remove the top layer of fat and skin from it. Aesthetically, a duck without skin may not look very attractive. But this method will help you cook game without a specific smell in a short time. This tip will be very relevant when they want to cook a duck right away, directly during the hunt.

Thanks to the manipulations done, the hunter's catch will allow him to get enough of the wild duck prepared no worse than by professional chefs.

Cooking wild duck is presented in the video:

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This method was used to prepare ducks, black grouse, hare, and roe deer. So, first things first. If the meat is frozen, then in the evening we put it in water, changing it several times (about once every 2 hours, if the meat is bloody, then first I change it a couple of times every half hour). Next, I let the meat cook, adding about half a spoon or a little more than 70% of vinegar essence, which helps remove the specific smell of game, while after cooking the meat does not smell like vinegar. During cooking, add salt to taste. Cook the meat until almost done. Let it cool and dry. Cut into portions. Rub the pieces with garlic. Chop the onion. I try to take onions with a “heap”, but this is a matter of taste. You can also grate carrots on a coarse grater. Pour sunflower oil into a thick frying pan and let it heat up. Fry the onions and carrots a little, so in the process of further cooking they will reach normal. Next, add pieces of meat and sprinkle with spices. I prefer to take spices without a flavor enhancer (sodium gluconate); it is best to buy them separately and mix them yourself. You can, of course, take ready-made mixtures. Fry the meat, uncovered, until a crust appears. We take the meat out onto a dish and sprinkle with pre-chopped herbs (dill, a little parsley, etc.). As a side dish, you can use rice (I like it best with game), boiled potatoes, or simply chopped fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers). The cooking process doesn’t take much time, everything turns out tasty and aromatic!

How to deliciously cook wild duck at home

Wild duck meat has a sharp, unpleasant odor reminiscent of fish.

To get rid of it, uncut poultry can be kept in the cold for several days. Also, when cutting, the skin is removed along with subcutaneous fat - it is this that is the source of the unpleasant odor.

After removing the giblets and entrails, the carcass is thoroughly washed and soaked for several hours in cool water with the addition of table vinegar in the proportion of 1 tbsp. l. for 1 l. After this, you can start cooking.

Peel the apples, cut into slices, remove the seeds.
Cut the onion into thin half rings.
Dry the washed carcass with paper towels. Rub salt inside and out. Place apples, onions and rosemary sprigs inside.
Brush the duck generously with olive oil. Place in a baking dish.

Wild duck meat is quite tough. It should be baked for at least 2 hours at an oven temperature of 200°C. An hour before the duck is ready, you can add potatoes, cut into large slices. You can serve the prepared meat with a vegetable salad.

Wild duck dishes. Tasty and healthy

Unlike poultry, wild birds feed exclusively on natural food and live in their natural environment. It is not surprising that the taste of game is much richer, its meat is darker in appearance and denser, and therefore somewhat more difficult to digest.

Poultry has become a familiar product for us, but the benefits of such meat are sometimes questioned. Thus, dishes from wild duck and domestic duck clearly differ in both taste and smell, and household members will certainly appreciate this. However, many housewives categorically refuse and even forbid their hunter husbands to bring home prey. And often the problem is precisely that they simply do not know how to cook wild duck correctly in order to eliminate its natural slightly unpleasant odor, remove feathers and gut it, combine it with other products for better taste, and also how to serve it to their loved ones.

Men will help in preparing the carcass - plucking, singeing and cutting. And then the hostess will certainly agree to prepare aromatic, nutritious dishes from wild duck. They can be done both outdoors and at home.

Recipe

Wild duck is best cooked in the oven. The recipe resembles the usual roast, but has a number of features. Firstly, in order not to spend a lot of time and effort on careful plucking, it is much easier to completely remove the skin from one or two birds. Then the carcasses are washed under running water and soaked while preparing the remaining products.

We wash and chop one hundred to one hundred and fifty grams of any edible mushrooms, two or three medium onions, peel and cut carrots into slices, and potatoes into cubes.

Wild duck dishes take quite a long time to prepare due to the density of the muscle tissue of the free-ranging bird, so we choose ceramic pots for the oven. Thus, all products will simmer slowly, and the beneficial properties of game and vegetables will not be lost.

First, fry the onions and mushrooms in hot oil until golden brown, then the carrots until softened, then add a piece of butter. When everything is ready, sprinkle the resulting mass with a pinch of salt and black pepper. Set aside.

At this time, we process the carcasses: cut them into convenient pieces, put them in a deep cup and generously season with salt, black and hot red pepper, you can also add ground allspice. Let them marinate for another 20-30 minutes, after which we cook them in hot oil until golden brown. Next, remove the duck from the pan, and fry the potatoes in the remaining juice. So, all the ingredients of our wild duck dish are ready to be placed in pots.

Pour a drop of oil into the bottom and place pieces of poultry. The second layer is potatoes, the third is chopped garlic. The fourth layer is fried mushrooms and vegetables. Distribute evenly, pour in a little water (so that there is still 4-5 centimeters left to the edges of the pot), close and put in the oven until fully cooked. When serving, decorate with herbs and sprinkle with spices to taste. Bon appetit!