How to cook a duck for a festive table

Baked duck is traditionally decorated with a Christmas table. This tradition is supported by many countries, especially popular is the dish in France. His many years of experience the French have invested in a huge number of recipes that describe in detail how to prepare a duck, what spices and fillings to use it, what side dishes and wine to serve it. Here we have them today and learn, taking on the arsenal of several French recipes.

To begin with, I must say that much depends on what kind of duck you have: shop or village. The difference between them is significant. Meat in the store duck is softer than in the village duck. With this account it must be prepared. If you are preparing the duck for the first time, it is better to take a shopping duck: take less with it. Remember that the meat of the duck is fat, and it needs baking together with the stuffing. Mincemeat for duck stuffing can be different: vegetables - potatoes, sauerkraut; Fruit - apples, apricots, oranges, dried fruits; Sour berries - cranberries, cranberries; Even porridge - buckwheat, for example. You just need to choose the filling to your liking.

Without a doubt, the duck, baked entirely, looks more spectacular, but the novice cook can choose a way of cooking easier. We offer you a recipe for how to cook duck pieces. In this case, we will dispense with the filling. The products that we need are vegetables and spices, which we will use for the sauce, and, actually, the duck itself. The duck is washed, gutted and dried. We divide the duck, separating the hips and wings from the carcass, and dividing the breast in half. Now turn the sauce: a few slices of garlic, passed through the press, mixed with mayonnaise, pepper and salt. You can add other spices, the choice of which will be limited only by your taste: dill, basil, thyme, parsley, coriander, caraway seeds. Prepare a large baking tray, on which we lay out pieces of duck, poured with a prepared sauce. Cover with foil and bake in the oven for an hour. Then remove the foil and bake the duck another 20 minutes before the ruddy crust.

There is another nuance that requires attention: how to cook a duck, so as not to overeat the meat. A duck does not like high temperatures. Therefore, when baking, set the maximum flame for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200 degrees, after another 10 minutes, reduce to 180 and this temperature is maintained in the future. A bowl with meat or a scallop is placed on the middle shelf, on the bottom the dishes with water are placed. These little wisdoms on how to make a duck juicy and soft, are not familiar to everyone.

And now we will pass to the second level of complexity and we will talk about how to prepare a duck entirely. Here, too, there are options: you can bake it in the oven, covering the entire surface with foil, or you can use a sleeve for baking. Consider option number two - how to cook a duck in the sleeve. For this we use the classic duck recipe with apples, but we will improve it.

We begin the same way as last time - mine and dry the bird. While she is draining over the towel, let's deal with the filling. The filling will be as follows: cut small apples 2 apples, 1 orange, add 80 grams of dried apricots and prunes, about the same amount of ground nuts (walnuts or almonds). Depending on the size of the duck, the filling volume can be reduced or increased, keeping the proportions. Just keep in mind the fact that the stuffing you are stuffing a bird with increases in volume, so leave a little space inside the duck. After stuffing a duck, sew a hole with thread or chop it with toothpicks. Top with a lot of oil sauce from vegetable oil, salt, pepper and seasonings. The remainder of the sauce is sliced with chopped pieces, peeled potatoes. Now one end of the sleeve is tightly tightened with a string, half of the potatoes are laid on the bottom, we place the duck on top, the second half of the potato closes the space of the sleeve, and we pull its second end. All this is put in the oven. After half an hour the duck is ready. If you do not have a sleeve for baking, use a foil, covering it well with a bird. In this case, you have to water the duck every half hour with sauce and fat, which flows down to the scallop (or on the baking tray) to prevent it from drying out.