If you’ve known me for a while, you understand I am happy in my kitchen, cooking and experimenting with food. I love to cook. I love to write. I love to take photos. So this results in me sharing a lot of food photos and cooking stories.
I probably cook a dozen ducks per year. This is one of my favorite meat because you can do so many things with it: duck salad, duck sandwich, duck poutine, duck pizza, and of course, just duck.
I just love food. I was born in a family of foodies. Both my parents love to cook and many of my childhood memories are about good food with good friends and family simply being together and sharing a meal.
My basic rule of cooking: with good ingredients, it’s hard to fail.
My second rule of cooking: keep it simple. I come from 20 years of emergency medicine and I am a single father every second week. I don’t have time for complicated recipes. A meal must not take more than 20 minutes to prepare otherwise it is categorized as : too complicated for me.
I started cooking duck many years ago on the rotisserie, on my BBQ and I switched to the oven because it’s just simpler. Yesterday, I wanted to try something different, even simpler. Could I cook a tasty duck in the slow cooker, overnight? Why not. Let’s try, the worst that can happen is I fail but even failed duck is excellent so let’s do it.
This is the simplest of the simplest recipe ever. Drop the duck in the slow cooker. Sprinkle with salt and any other spice you like. I mean anything. Forget overnight at low temperature. The difference between oven and slow cooker is that you can forget about the slow cooker overnight or during the day. It makes life easier.
This morning, the duck was ready and so tender it’s unbelievable.
My only disappointment is that the skin is not crispy like in the oven, it’s just cooked.
After boning the duck and getting all that tender meat, I refused to discard the skin so I just re-grilled it on the iron cast pan for 5 minutes. All that skin came out crispy and salty, the taste and texture brought an image to my mind: it’s duck bacon! I love it!
Total time to prepare, bone the duck and regrill the skin was probably 20 minutes. Awesome!
You can eat duck right out of the oven, a nice piece of leg with a salad is a great meal. Tonight, i just wanted to eat a light salad so i prepared a quick duck – goat cheese – cranberry – nuts – mango, fresh basil and avocados salad. It looks complicated but it’s not. Just mix the ingredient and serve with olive oil, fresh basil and balsamic vinegar.
With the duck leftovers, we’ll enjoy duck spring rolls tomorrow and either duck pizza or pho soup later this week.
Martin Pham Dinh 