Boiled duck is a refreshing and healthy dish that many people love, but if you don’t know how to handle duck meat, it can have an unpleasant smell. That’s why, when boiling duck, pay attention to these tips to make the dish more flavorful and delicious.
Ingredients for boiled duck
1 duck, about 2kg
2 fresh ginger roots
1 dried onion
Rice vinegar
White wine
How to make flavorful and delicious boiled duck
Step 1: Prepare the duck
When buying live duck, you can ask the seller to prepare it for you or do it yourself at home. After cutting off the feet, the duck will be immersed in boiling water to remove the feathers. You will notice that there is a black liquid in the hair follicles of the duck’s body, squeeze it out and rinse it off as it makes the duck smell.
Phao câu is the main culprit for the strong fishy smell of boiled duck meat, so you should completely remove it because it is both smelly and not good for health. Another note is to remove the dirty tongue inside the duck’s beak!
After cleaning the feathers, you gut the duck and remove all the innards. You can process the innards, either by boiling them with the duck or slicing them small to make dishes like stir-fried duck liver with vermicelli, stir-fried duck liver with cowpeas, stir-fried duck liver with baby bok choy, etc.
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Step 2: Remove the smell from the duck meat
This is an important step. Although you have cleaned the feathers and removed the phao câu, the duck meat will still have a distinctive smell if not processed.
You use coarse salt to rub both inside and outside the duck, then rinse it off. After that, cut a few slices of ginger and rub it on the duck, then rinse it again. Ginger effectively removes the fishy smell of the duck and makes it more fragrant when boiled.
If you want to be more careful, you can use white wine or ginger wine, rice vinegar to wash the duck and rinse it with water again, then the duck will no longer have a fishy smell.
Step 3: Boil the duck
The taste of boiled duck depends largely on the ingredients and the boiling method. You bring a pot of water to a boil with enough water to submerge the entire duck, add 1 crushed ginger or 1 dried roasted onion, or 1 grilled ginger. These ingredients will give the boiled duck a fragrant and enticing aroma.
When boiling the duck, you should not use high heat, just simmering water, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 20 – 30 minutes for the duck to slowly cook.
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Boil the duck for about 20 minutes, use chopsticks to poke the duck thigh, if the water that comes out is not red, the duck is cooked inside. Take it out, let it cool, then chop it into small pieces to eat immediately.
Step 4: Chop the duck and arrange it on a plate
With duck meat, when it is still hot after boiling, chop it immediately, the meat will be tender and more delicious compared to chicken, which needs to be cooled before chopping. Chop the duck into bite-sized pieces and arrange on a plate.
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