I pulled a duck out of the freezer a few days ago and needed to cook it. The thing with duck is it normally needs a few hours of roasting, time I don’t have on a week night. Who has a few hours to get dinner on the table after an hour commute, picking up the kid(s), and hustling back home? I sure don’t.

But then, the duck is thawed and I have to do something with it. Crock-pot! The thing is, fowl in a crock-pot can be, well… foul, soggy, limp, and totally unappetizing. My challenge is how to avoid that.

Duck naturally has a lot of fat. That’s why it is so good!  But if we can raise the duck out of the fat, perhaps we’ll be OK.

This was all going down at 5:30am so I can be on the 6:53 train. Wow, coffee and breaking down a duck. Let’s start with the duck.

Crock Pot Duck

[tw-divider]INGREDIENTS[/tw-divider]
1 whole duck
4 Carrots rough chopped
4 large red potatoes cut into wedges
2 Onions roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic – roughly chopped
1 Tablespoon salt
pepper
1 cup of stock
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[tw-divider]METHOD[/tw-divider]

  1. Using shears, remove backbone. Then using a sharp knife cut through the breast.

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  2. Cut between the thigh and the breast for 4 pieces.
  3. Put cut vegetables into bottom of crock-pot.
  4. Nestle the four duck quarters on top of the root vegetables.

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  5. Add a tbs of kosher salt, and a heavy grind of black pepper.
  6. Add a cup of stock or water. Cover. Set on low, this cooked for 11.5 hours. It seems like too long but it was going from cold.

    7. Surprisingly when I got home, there was some slight browning on the top!

  7. To finish it, I heated the oven to 375F, pulled the duck quarters, the carrots and  potatoes,  put them on a foil lined cookie sheet and roasted until the skin was crisp, about 20 minutes.

Plate it up and enjoy! If I had the time I would have separated the fat from the broth and made a sauce, but with hungry people clamoring for dinner, I need to get it served now!
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Until next time, Eat Well & Keep Digging!