Cantonese Roast Duck The best we've ever eaten The Woks of Life

A little rice. This is the real deal. Smoked brisket. Oh yes. Look at that. Boom. Dig in. Hi everyone, I'm excited today because I'm going to show you some tips and tricks on how to cook one of our recipes in our new cookbook, The Walks of Life, recipes to know and love from a Chinese American family, that's us. So today, it's a Cantonese roast duck. If you've ever been in Chinatown, you see them hanging in clear glass windows and the guy chopping the ducks in front of the window, you'll know what they are and you can smell them a mile away. And now you're going to be able to cook it from home. A Cantonese roast duck is different because than what most people think it is. Some people think it's a Peking duck, I'm going to get crispy skin, but Peking ducks are all a different kind of duck. It's all about the skin, it's all about the crispiness, roasted on a wood oven stove. And this Cantonese duck is super fragrant and super delicious, but it doesn't have crispy skin. And I promise you, if you know that ahead of time, you won't be disappointed, you'll be very delighted. When you're preparing this Cantonese duck, there's actually a few steps to it. There's the dry rub, there's the wet rub, and then there's the preparation of the skin and the roasting, which involves, yes, blowing up the skin and separating the skin from the rest of the duck so that the fat can render properly and the fat actually bastes the duck while it's roasting. All these spices and aromatics are fairly easy to find. You can get them in any well-stocked grocery store, Chinese grocery store. A buddy of mine who actually recipe tested for us had no issues finding it. This implement is basically an electric air pump that you use. And I bought this. It costs about $10, $12. It's dedicated for doing things like this for food, actually. We also have some metal skewers. So I'll show you the technique on how to skewer the duck and close it up because everything has to be closed up when we pump the duck full of air to separate the skin from the cavity. And what happens is that that allows the fat to render and baste the duck inside while all the aromatics are bubbling inside and cooking and all that deliciousness comes out. As I said before, this is a headless duck, and the duck is a little bit easier to seal when you have a head because you just have the neck. But I'll show you how to do it with a headless duck. So let me go over the duck, what I did to prep the duck. I washed it pretty thoroughly. And of course, you know, whenever you do that, you just got to watch your sanitary. People say they don't like washing poultry, but if you're careful about it, you're fine. And what I did was in the cavity, I washed and took out the organs. There's actually two kidneys at the bottom of the duck that the butcher doesn't take out, and the giblets inside, the duck liver and the neck is inside. We took that out, and actually I'm boiling that up for barley right now. You can see a very large flap of skin here at the top of the duck. And you know, this one looks like it's a little bit cut and mangled, so we're going to have to kind of sew around that or skewer around that to get an airtight seal. There's usually a lot of fat around the bottom of the duck, so you have to take that fat out. Also, with this duck, it came with the feet cut off. When you get a duck in Chinatown, a full-sized duck, a lot of times you'll get the feet attached to the duck, and you just cut them off at the joints, making sure that you don't shortchange the skin here, right? You got to pull that duck tight, taut, and then cut it at the joint and make sure the skin is not broken around the joint. Restaurants will cut off the entire wing and leave just the drumette for roasting, but I actually just cut off the tip instead and left the wing here, because restaurants actually have dishes that they can use the whole wings for, and we don't. We're not going to do that. Make sure you also start with a cold duck, because a cold duck is going to be firm, and it's going to be easier to seal. Otherwise, if your duck is warmed up, the fat is going to be soft, and it's going to be actually hard to seal and might rip. So, let's get to it. The first step we're going to do is dry rub the duck, and then we're going to refrigerate it, and while we're refrigerating it, we'll cook the cooked marinade on the stove and put that in, and then seal the duck up. But I've put together this dry rub from the recipe in the book already, and there's two tablespoons of Shaoxing wine, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to pour it in, and I'm going to rub it all inside the cavity. Get a bit of that. Kind of rub it up and down. Roll it around a little bit. Okay. So, all coated. Only on the inside. Very important. I'm going to pour some of this marinade in. Not marinade, it's a dry rub. And just rub it all inside. Make sure you get it all over, especially on the breast side. Do your best not to get anything on the outside of the skin. It's going to, quote-unquote, stain the skin. Got that. You can put it in a little bit at a time, or you can just go for it and put it all. Now, why don't we do that? Pour it all. Pour it in there. Turn it upside down, get the other side. And okay. We're good. That's the first step. We're going to put this in the refrigerator. Keep it cool for about an hour. And during that time, we're going to cook our marinade on the stove. And then let that cool. And then by that time, we're going to be ready to stuff the duck and seal it up. Okay. We've got our duck in the refrigerator. We've rubbed the inside. And now we're going to make the marinade. So I'm just going to add a little bit of oil. Okay. Ginger. Let that ginger infuse the oil. And then we're going to add the garlic. We're going to add our aromatics. You can add them all at the same time. It's okay. So these aromatics smell super. So you've got these aromatics. You've got the spices dry rubbing, penetrating that duck. And then you've got this marinade that we're going to cook next. It's just an explosion of flavor. It's going to taste so good. I'm going to add this sauce mixture. Stir it in. So I'm going to let this come up to a simmer. And once it simmers, then all the flavor is going to come out of that sauce. It's just going to start to cook. The cooked sauce makes all the difference. Much different than if you put it in raw. Plus it also allows all the aromatics to infuse into the sauce. Everything becomes one. One flavor. And that's what we're looking for. The flavor of the Cantonese duck. I think this is ready. And we're going to let it cool. And we probably have another 20 minutes to wait for the duck. And the reason why we refrigerate the duck is A. We want the duck skin and fat to be cold and firm. But we also want that dry rub to actually sort of seep into the duck. With the Shaoxing wine and the moisture of the duck, we want all that dry rub to go in and meld into that duck before we put this cooled marinade in there. And it's just a double whammy of flavor there. Alright, we've got our duck from the fridge. We've got the cooled marinade. And then just pour it right in. You've got to be careful not to stain the duck skin because you want that duck to be uniform brown. Scraping every drop here. Alright. Spread it all around on the top. So we're going to get all the marinade in here. And I've been saying that try your best not to get the marinade on the skin. But if you do, it's not the end of the world because we're going to give the duck a little bit of a water bath. And that'll wash things off a bit. But just take a little care and try not to get that done. I'm going to wash my hands and I'll come right back. Alright. So now we've got this done here. And now this is the tricky part. One of the reasons why I want to make this video is that we're going to skewer this duck. And there's a specific way on how to skewer this duck to make sure it's sealed. If you skewer the duck and you just zigzag it, the stitch is not going to work. It's not going to be a tight seal. You have to do an over, under, over, under. So it's super important on how you actually close this duck up with a skewer. And you've got a pretty long skewer here. And the way I'm going to do it right now is that from the tail up. So this is pretty cut open pretty badly. But I'm just going to have to be patient about it. And this is why again, I'll stress again, that the duck has to be cold. Because otherwise the fat gets squishy and it's hard to handle. So what you're going to do at the beginning over here, you're going to poke it through like that. And then you're going to go over. Okay. And then go back under like that. About an inch or a half an inch out, over, under. Okay. And you're using your other finger to pinch the duck cavity together. Over, under. Take your time with this. You might want to stick it out a little bit more, about an inch. Over, under. And just work your way over, under. And this gives you a much better seal. Because we're going to need a seal. We're actually going to inflate the duck. And of course you're not going to get a completely airtight seal. But you want it as best as possible. And I'll explain that later. But we want that duck skin to separate from the duck body. So we're almost there. Over, under. Push it through a little bit more. Over, under. Just like that. And then the last move, you're going to go over. And instead of coming out, because now it's all sealed, you're going to stick this skewer. You see this part over here. You're going to stick it all the way in. And tighten it up. Just like that. And you see, you've got a little stitch here like that. That's why you want to get a skewer with decent length on it. Now we're going to turn over the duck and take a look at the other side. So the other side has this big flap of skin. And we'll do the same thing where we're going to seal this guy up. We use a skewer. Now you could actually, some people like to sew it up. So you can sew it up also. But just make sure that, again, you try to get an airtight seal as possible. And I'm going to use the same method I used for the back. And go in, over, under, in, over, under. And this is a little, you know, sometimes you've got to use two skewers to do this. But let's see if we can do it with one. Over, under. You want these stitches to be kind of tight, actually. Because you do want sort of a good seal on it. Over. I pushed it a little too far. Over, under. Okay. Now, I left this little hole here. So before finishing it, I have this, I'm going to inflate it. So, obviously I picked the wrong skewer. Ah, they're almost the same length. This is a long skewer. I should have used the shorter skewer. Now, since I have the duck, I'm going to use this little hole here. And we're going to blow up the duck. And we can start from this side first. So I'm going to turn this on. It's going to be a little noisy. We've got some air coming out of here. And now, I'm going to put it in the skin flap. You see what's happening? The air, the skin is separating. Alright, that's what you want. You want to get that separation of the skin here. And you want to actually, what you want to do is you want to put your hands around this and make a tight seal. And when you've got a tight seal, you can massage it a little bit and that will help. So you see how that's separated. Now, we're going to turn this over. Okay. And make sure that we get separation. Now, what's important about the separation is that if you don't get total separation of the skin, it's not the end of the world. But you're not going to get a uniform roast. You'll get light spots where the skin hasn't separated because the moisture goes in and there's not enough fat in between that's basting it and roasting the skin. So you'll get spotty sections. You won't get that uniform golden color. Alright, so now we've turned over the duck and we're going to blow it up again. But I just want to make sure the skin is separating from this side as well. So I'm going to turn this guy on. Make sure there's a seal here. There we go. What if you don't? You don't do it, you're not going to get even colors, but it's not going to be, you know. But it'll still be good. It'll still taste good. Okay. Here. So sometimes this duck, these ducks, the skin is stuck to the membrane for whatever reason. I think maybe because it's been frozen for a long time and you have to work your finger in here. Just the air is not going to do it as you saw before. And I'll show you. Look at that. I broke this actually. But it's okay. It's not the end of the world. It sprung a leak here. So this part over here is not separating. But, you know, you do your best to do what you can. And this part probably might not brown right. But it's not the end of the world. Oh, there we go. I guess I didn't have it sealed. Like a balloon, isn't it? That's pretty cool, huh? It's a bit of a hassle, but trust me, it's worth it. No, it's the separation mostly. Some of the air will be in the duck, but I think what it is is that I didn't get this. Let me do another over under here. So you might have to do this a couple of times. Now you can see why I wanted to show this on a video because sometimes you can encounter difficulty. Let me turn over the duck and see what it looks like. There we go. You got to do this a couple of times. You know, let the skin rest. And what I'm doing is I'm using my thumb here to plug up the hole that I made. So, pretty good. We're getting decent separation here. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries. Some ducks are hard. This has been frozen for a long time. Okay. So, okay, we blew the duck up and we separated the skin. And now we're just going to finish the seal over here. And hopefully you have a smaller skewer. I actually used a slightly larger skewer. So this is going to be a little bit awkward, but, you know, it'll be fine. A bamboo skewer you can use also, but it's probably not as sealing, if you will. It won't be as sealed. Here's the duck. Kind of ready to go into our next step, which is giving the duck a vinegar bath. All right, so what I've got here now is the duck. It's blown up. It's sealed. And I turned it over. Put the duck up on a wire rack in the sheet pan. So it's going to raise up because what I've got to do is I've got some water boiling. Four cups of water boiling. And we're going to blanch the skin. It's going to shrink the skin. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my red vinegar and maltose and salt and then make the bath for the duck that gives it that rich brown color. So the water's boiling now. So I'm going to take this and pour little bits of it. Watch the skin. You see that shrinking? That skin's shrinking. Tightens everything up. See if you can see that over this drumstick. You see that shrink. All the fat tightens right up. So if you see any little feathers, you can pull them off. Take this now. I'm going to turn it over. And we're going to do the same thing here. Turn this off. Pour the last bit of that over here. Tighten up all that skin. Okay. Now, in Chinese restaurants, you wouldn't think that they did this, right? They put hooks under each one of these arms and they hang it up. And then they have this big vat of boiling water and they just dip it in and the whole thing gets shrunk at once. And it's a very fast process. They basically dip it and hang it, dip it and hang it. And it's constantly boiling water and it's a process. So now we're going to prepare the vinegar bath. And I'm going to pour this water out after it cools. I'm going to boil water here and I'm going to add the maltose. Yes, this is the maltose. That's why it has that nice sticky property to it. Let that melt in there. I'm just going to use my fingers here. There we go. A little salt. Maltose is basically kind of a barley or a grain. It's a grain sugar. I suppose you could use honey for it, but the maltose has that stiff property. Honey kind of remains liquidy. Maltose hardens like candy, actually, which is why we use it. And then we're going to add our vinegar. All right. Stir that around. Let that come to a boil. Let all the salt dissolve. Our duck is in waiting over here. And we're just going to coat this. And after we coat this, this is the back. After we coat this, turn it over and coat the other side. Just do the same thing here. Make sure we get underneath the wings. Because if you don't get underneath the wings, you're not going to get uniform color. So make sure that you get an even coating of everything. Any spots, trust me, that you miss are not going to have that nice golden brown color. This is a painstaking process. It's a lot of work. Like I said to you, it's going to be worth it, but we do want to get it right. And just kind of pour this back in just like that. Not too difficult. Just got to be careful. It's okay if you don't get all of it. Okay. Bring it up to a boil again. It's boiled up again. I'm going to get this again. And all you folks might be a little bit scared about this process. And the first few times I did it, I did it over a wok. I tried to dip the whole duck into the wok. And it was very awkward. And I found that this method is best. And it's actually not that bad, you see. But it is a lot of work. But it is totally, totally worth it. Trust me on that. Turn it over one more time. Make sure I get the wings. You see it's already starting to take this light pinkish tint. And that's going to turn brown in the oven. Just going to pour the rest of it on there. All right. The duck is ready. I'm just going to pour this liquid off. And take this rack off. Pour all the liquid off. And store this breast side down. Just like that. Now we're going to let this duck sit for about 30 minutes outside. Let it cool off a little bit. And then we're going to store it inside the fridge uncovered to let it dry out, actually. And what you'll see at a lot of these restaurants, maybe you've seen, you know, peered in the back, in the back door in the kitchen. You'll see ducks hanging from a rack. That's what they're doing. They're letting it dry out for roasting the next day. And we're going to do the same. Hi, everyone. Very exciting day. Second day of the roast duck. So we have dry rubbed the roast duck, put in the cooked marinade, and we stitched it up. We've blown it up, separated the skin, and refrigerated it. Breast side down, if you remember. And the directions in the book say that you're supposed to turn it over, breast side up, and leave it out for at least two hours. So I've left it about two, three hours right now, and it's come up to room temperature. And the next thing I'm going to show you is how to set up your roasting rack. And what we've done is, let me set this aside for a moment. And I recommend this roasting rack here. It's a V-roasting rack. It has one of these that you can set up. And the reason why I do that, it elevates the duck, and it actually makes the minimal amount of markings on the duck. So if you all notice in Chinatown, they have these roasting ovens. They're hanging. The ducks are hanging. So they hang in the oven when they're roasting as well. So they have no marks on them. The fat renders down. But at home, it's kind of tough to do that, so we're going to get a roasting rack. You can get a flat roasting rack too, but this V-roasting rack, I find, works really nicely. So I'm going to show you how to set that up. I have a piece of heavy-duty foil that I put down. And this also minimizes the cleanup time. Actually, it speeds cleanup time, but it also minimizes the marks that you have on the duck. So I'm going to set that up just like that. Put this V-rack on the widest, if you will, setting. We're going to put the duck on the V-rack, breast side down for roasting. Breast side down. Just like that. And then I'm going to put this back on to the roasting rack. That's how we're going to roast it. Just like that. And we have water. A little bit of water. So that all fat drippings will drip onto the water and there won't be too much smoking. And that's exactly what the Chinese restaurants do when they hang the ducks in their roasting oven to roast. There's a big pan of water and that drips down there so it doesn't directly onto a hot pan. So what we're going to do, we've got our oven preheated at 350 degrees. We're going to roast it for 25 minutes. We're going to rotate the pan to make sure we're even roasting. Another 25 minutes. Then we're going to take it out. I'm going to use some heat-proof gloves. And we're going to turn it over. And we're going to roast it another 20 minutes. And we're going to rotate it again, 20 minutes. It's a total of about an hour and a half at 350 degrees. And then she's going to be ready to go. Alright, here it goes in the oven. I'm just going to put it in the middle part of the oven. The upper third, I guess they'll call it, of the oven. We're going to start our timer. So remember when we put water in the pan. Halfway through, at some point all your water is going to evaporate. And it's going to start splattering or maybe it's going to start smoking. What you want to do is add hot water to the pan. And that will prevent it from happening. Just to do this. That's it. Just another caution. When you're taking it out, just be careful. Let the oil and the water sloshing around. Be super careful. That's it. That looks good. It's sizzling. It's got a lot of color. And let's take this out to flip it. Oh yeah. I've got to work fast. I've still got my mitts on. I've put it on a space here, stable to work on. What I've found is the best way to do this is just to use your mitts. Or if you've got heat proof gloves, even better. And just flip it with authority. But carefully. I'm going to take this up. Rotate it around. Careful. Don't want to burn yourself like I just did. And look at that. Make sure it's set stable on here. Just like that. And back in the oven it goes. Excited. Alright, the moment of truth. Here it is. Carefully. Oh yes, here it is. Look at that. I'm going to take it over on the counter. It looks great. So I remember that little hole. I had a little hole over here. So there was a little bit of a blemish. I don't know if you can see it. But there's a little bit of a blemish over here. But it ain't the end of the world right there. It's not bad because you want to try to avoid that. Because basically liquid comes out and it doesn't come out evenly. But again, not the end of the world. And you can see how much grease and oil from the duck has rendered out. And that's why I also recommend if it's a first time roasting. Or if you have a large roasting pan with a higher rim to use that. So let me put this on a plate right now. Because I have to let this cool. So I can handle it by the skewer here. Carefully. Okay. Put this right on the plate. Everything is very, super, super hot. So be very careful. And don't be alarmed when it does cool. After it cools it will start to become a little wrinkly. Totally normal. It's okay. It's going to taste great. Alright, so we've got this cooled. Rested for about 20 minutes. I'm going to gently lift this up. You see some juices coming out. I am going to first take this long skewer out. There you go. Kind of dislodge that. Over here. And then same thing with this skewer. Actually a trick is you just twist it. Twist it a little bit. Back and forth. Move it a little back and forth. Twist it. With the knife. This is giving me a little trouble. There you go. Move this out just like that. Now you can use, you're going to need a bowl because there's some hot liquid out of here and you've got to be careful. And you could use a pair of gloves or if you have kitchen hands like me you can just kind of hold it. And rest it on the bowl slightly. And we're going to cut this open. Just like that. So you cut the cavity open. You're going to drain it of all the juice. Okay. Just so that the cutting board doesn't get too messy. Let's see if there's more. Give it a couple of shakes. Move the bowl here. Okay. So now you've got your duck. What do you do with the juice? You can reserve the juice. You can pour it over. Or you can, you know, when you serve it. But it is salty. So you should taste it before you do that. So I'm going to cut it right in half. Give it a little chop here like that. And then I'll peek inside. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut. There's one side of a backbone here. It's very hard to see. But there's one side of the backbone. You've got to pick one side, the left or right side of the backbone. And line it up. And what I do is I just give it a little tap. A little tap like that. Of course the guys at Chinatown, they just dig right into it. Kind of like that. Okay. Cut it. Or you could use kitchen shears too if you're a kitchen shear person. And you've got these halves right here with aromatics. So now what you want to do is actually want to scrape these aromatics out because you can't eat them. Okay. And this is where it pays off to clean the cavity of the duck. And I'm going to transfer half of the duck to the plate. How do you cut this duck? So the way I do it is I'll take this first. I'll take this little wing off. You could almost snap it off at this point. Take that off. And then you take this wing, this drumette, and right at the armpit here you find the socket. You cut it. You pull a little bit. You find the socket. And you cut right down the socket. And then you've got this. Now this is a beauty for anybody. It's like the second drumstick for your little brother after the older brother says, hey, this is the same as the regular drumstick. But it's not really. So then you take this. Right where the separation of the drumstick is and the thigh, what you're going to do is you're going to take that whole piece straight down at an angle all the way down. And then you're going to just cut it like that. And then you've got that thigh piece right here. And then you've got this breast piece here. Okay. And then the next thing is you take this drumstick again. Now you've noticed it's rested so it's not. So it's still kind of the juices and the oils are coming out, but it's much better. Again, look for where the socket is. You can hear that crackling. Just cut it right there. And there you go. You've got this beautiful drumstick here. Now the drumsticks, you can actually cut these as well or you can just leave them alone. Now the way you handle this after that, the way you cut this, is that this is the thigh bone of the drumstick. And, again, you cut where the fat line is, find the joint, and cut that. Cut that in half like that. And the reason why I'm jamming this, and, you know, you can use a cloth on top of that or you can use some padding if you're afraid of hurting your hands. But the reason why I do that is so it doesn't splash all over the place. This is the back of the piece. And this, actually, for me, this is the most delicious piece. I love this piece. Cut it right down the middle. Just like that. And then you cut it into pieces. Like that. And that's just ready to serve on a plate, you can see. And then you've got a whole breast piece here and then the other side of the breast, which is a little bit bony, but, you know, call me Chinese, but I kind of like that section. So I'm going to cut this sort of almost in half. And this is where that thin bone is. I'm just going to give it a couple cuts. This is where the shears come in really handy if you have them. And this, again, some of the aromatics fell out. I'll put those aside. And then this is where it comes in handy. And cut these just like that. And you can see it's a little splash if you do that, which is why I don't like, usually don't try not to do that. And these have bones in them, more bones. Now, this is a pure breast piece. This is just about all meat. You can actually just cut this bone out and have a completely boneless piece of duck. So what I do is I cut the skin, get to the bone, just give it a little tap. Cut the skin, get to the bone, little tap. And repeat. You don't want the skin to fall off if you just go smashing it. Well, I don't want the skin to fall off. Well, it's more like I don't want to make a mess. And, you know, because it'll splash all over the place. It'll splash on my apron. I've got to clean everything up. So that's why I really don't do it. But look at that. You've got a beautiful breast piece here. You've got this beautiful piece. Now, you could serve this whole, like I said, or you could cut it. Same thing. Cut this piece off like this. Cut it, hit the bone. And this one, you're going to have to give it a more firmer because this is a harder bone. But it's cooked, so you just get it until, you know, you get firmly on the bone and you give it a good tap. Like that. Same thing. Hit the bone. Tap. Now, you've got that. And the same thing with your drumstick. Hit it to the bone. Once you're firmly on the bone, give it a firm, solid tap. Like that. Usually about three pieces. And there you have it, half a duck. And then you just put it on the plate and let everybody have at it. Maybe that's the best way. But here you go. Cantonese Roast Duck, just for you at home. Oh, boy. I've got rice, I've got duck, I've got vegetable, and a duck leg. So I'm going to prepare this. A little rice. This is the real deal. So good. Excuse me. Wow. So good. That's how you do it, folks. Cantonese Roast Duck. And at home, it's doable. You can do it. It may not be the easiest, but it's worth the effort, especially if you can't get it. Maybe I should be a little bit more humble, but I think you'll get it pretty close to the restaurant. If not better. Enjoy, folks. Okay, so let's set up the shot for when you're cutting it. Camera's rolling. Right at home. At home. Easy. Also, Daddy, I can't believe you said it was easy. Another shot of me saying, enjoy.