| Total: | 2 hr 15 min |
| Prep: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 2 hr |
| Yield: | 6 to 8 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 (5 1/2-pound) duckling
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 onion, sliced
- 1 cup red currant jelly
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Season both the outside and inside of the duckling with salt and pepper. Place the onion inside the duck. Truss the bird and prick the skin. Dry thoroughly.
- Place the duck breast-side up in a roasting pan and place in the center rack of a 425 degree preheated oven for 15 minutes to brown lightly. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and roast for 1 additional hour to 1 hour and 25 minutes. Remove accumulated fat occasionally with a bulb baster.
- The duck is done to medium rare if the juices from the fattest part of the thigh or drumstick run faintly rosy when the duck is pricked, and when the duck is lifted and drained, the last drops of juice from the vent are pale rose. The duck is well done when the juices run pale yellow.
- Remove the duck from the oven, discard trussing strings, and place on a serving platter. Let sit for 10 minutes before carving.
- In a saucepan, combine the red currant jelly and the lemon juice. Bring to a boil, strain, and serve with the duck.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 8 servings |
| Calories | 1025 |
| Total Fat | 88 g |
| Saturated Fat | 30 g |
| Carbohydrates | 29 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Sugar | 20 g |
| Protein | 26 g |
| Cholesterol | 171 mg |
| Sodium | 446 mg |
Reviews
Classic recipe. Results were fantastic.
To: Appleflipper – This recipe is for domesticated ducks, not wild. Wild ducks have practically no fat since they have to work so hard for a living. Therefore, they require an entirely different cooking method. My in-laws used to bring me wild ducks and pheasants from the Midwest, so I had to learn this the hard way. Wild ducks are terribly scrawny and cannot be cooked for very long, lest they toughen even more than they already are. Domesticated ducks are fat and plump with plenty of fat and meat, compared to wild. Your only mistake was using this cooking method for wild duck, which is actually best served medium rare.
I don’t know what I did wrong here… My duck nearly burned to a crisp while I followed this recipe! I have a wild duck and did place strips of bacon on it like some other reviewers suggested. I also added an apple to the onion just to give the inside a little more moisture in case my duck is much leaner than what most of the reviewers roasted. I wanted to love this recipe as much as the other reviewers did, but it was a complete disaster for me! Even the drippings in the pan are black. My house is in the fog from all the splattering and burning in the oven. My oven has only “convection roast” setting. Could that be the problem? Is it a lot hotter than non-convection roasting? If so, what can I do to modify this recipe to work for me? The meat is very dry. I have another duck in the freezer for Christmas and I am terrified to have the same experience…. Argh! So disappointed at the moment. Any suggestions/ideas/advice would be really appreciated. Thank you!
Great! But a little too salty. I will make this again. Although, there is no way this will feed 6-8 people. I made 2 ducks and it just barely fed 5 adults.
This is a wonderful recipe. I didn’t make the sauce and used more salt and pepper that called for by the recipe, but my family absolutely loved it! I used some of the duck fat to make a gravy: 3 table spoons duck fat, 3 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons flour, about 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, a little over a 1/4 teaspoon ground sage, 1 cup chicken stock 1 cup half and half or cream. Heat up duck fat and butter until butter is melted over medium heat. Add flour, salt, pepper and sage and stir until smooth (add a little more butter or fat if it gets lumpy. Add broth and milk, stir until thick (to your liking. Taste and adjust seasonings if too spicy add a little more cream to the mixture, stir and then taste again. Serve with mash potatoes put over the onions from the duck cavity and along with the duck!
Outstanding results for this recipe, and made for a nice twist on our traditional Thanksgiving meal. My only caveat – no way you serve 6 to 8 with this size bird. Other recipes serving that size crowd use two ducks. We fed three light eaters, and barely had enough left for a lunch portion for one. No complaints on the flavors though!
From Mastering the Art of French Cooking, page 274, read how the description matches almost verbatim Julia Child’s recipe for Roast Duckling.
The recipe was fine, but I much prefer the way my parents roast duck. We get our ducks wild; dad hunts them regularly during the season. (Before anyone starts crying “poor birds”, mallards are plentiful here, so much so that if they aren’t hunted, they would starve to death.) We stuff our ducks with a traditional bread stuffing, using lots of sage as we do in the West. Before placing the birds in the oven, three strips of bacon are placed on the ducks’ backs, as wild duck is lean and in order for the birds not to be dry, you have to add some sort of fat. Goes great with mashed, baked or roasted potatoes and a homemade pumpkin pie, or juneberry (sarvice/service berry) pie. Don’t try to make gravy out of the drippings, it’s much to “game-y” and I grew up on wild game and even I don’t like duck gravy.
We live in east end of Long Island and have a duck farm right by us so have the luxury of buying fresh duckling, but I didn’t have the right directions on how to roast it. It kept getting over done — we like it pink and tender. Once when I had my stepfather over and made roast duck using a different recipe it got overdone and he said, “You killed it!!” But this recipe made the duckling come out PERFECTLY! Succulent, tender & juicy with the right amount of pink (after 15 minutes at 425, we just did 1 hour at 350 and it was perfect!), we devoured it as though we were in a gourmet restaurant (I served it with rose jelly that was UNBELIEVABLE). I also stuffed it with the onion as prescribed, as well as a twig of thyme, garlic, dried prunes and apricots, and that was a nice condiment to the meat as well.
Worked out nicely; glad this recipe was available to view