Spreadelicious duck breast

No, you haven’t misread it. The title really does say “spreadelicious”. Not just delicious. SPREADELICIOUS. A little neologism from my primitive kitchen. It means something that tastes good and can also be spread on bread. Spread on it, you might say. Not greasing someone else’s palm, but treating yourself… doing something good mainly for your own benefit. No reciprocating and no sharing. Just for you. Because this duck breast is simply spreadelicious. The best, in other words.

It came out of a bit of an experiment: I marinated two duck breasts and more or less forgot about them. Not that they sat in the marinade for goodness knows how long, just a little under two days. That had actually been the plan. But I started cooking them too late for them to count even as a late dinner, so I had to find another use for them. I’d tasted a tiny piece after roasting — you can see it in the photograph, so you can see it really was only a tiny piece — and liked it so much that I decided breakfast was the longest I could possibly wait. Instead of a classic duck breast, you know, a dinner-sized portion, I’d make a sort of spread for bread. Not a traditional finely ground pâté, but pieces of meat with the fat that had rendered so beautifully from the duck, as it usually does.

And that is how spreadelicious duck breast came into being. Not for sharing.

We’ve become very keen on sharing lately. I like to share sometimes too. But at the moment, I think we occasionally take it a little too far. Biebrza National Park is burning, and we’re crowdfunding fuel… for the firefighters, admittedly. But excuse me: firefighters can’t afford fuel in the world’s green island? Even one minister’s little green men get a special fuel discount from Mr Obajtek, the company’s boss, but firefighters don’t? What’s going on? Or is the point precisely that we should keep sharing and solve every problem ourselves? Perhaps it would all make some kind of sense — although some would call it anarchy — if those currently taking from us would simply… well, you know… keep their greasy hands off our money 😉

The duck, however, I wholeheartedly recommend. Beautifully marinated breast, then roasted. You don’t have to do exactly what I did, either. You can simply eat it whole with potatoes and a creamy cucumber salad, which you are, of course, allowed to share.

At a glance:

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Marinating time: up to 40 hours

Roasting time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Oven setting: first about 10 minutes under the oven’s high grill, then top and bottom heat at 180°C

Serves: there are two breasts, so one person 🙂

Calories: two duckories

Ingredients for delicious duck to spread on bread:

• 2 duck breasts (skin on, of course)
• half a bottle of teriyaki marinade (I had Kikkoman)
• the juice of one orange
• freshly ground black pepper
• smoked paprika
• coriander seeds
• crushed coriander with black pepper
• dried thyme
• salt

How to make duck breast that’ll replace even the finest cold cuts:

The recipe is very simple. It only asks for time, because you can’t properly marinate duck in a moment and then roast it until tender in 5 minutes. Apart from time, though, it doesn’t require any particular skills. In that respect, it’s a classic Prymitywna Kuchnia recipe. Nor does it have to end up spreadelicious. You can simply eat the roasted breasts as the centrepiece of dinner, for example. That will be perfectly good too. I recommend following this version right to the end, though: leaving the duck overnight in the fridge in a jar, or, as I did, another glass container where you can press the breasts together. Ready? Off we go.

I started by marinating the duck breasts. As you can see, I had two, and the ingredients are roughly enough for two medium breasts. First I rubbed them generously with salt, freshly ground black pepper, the pepper and crushed coriander mixture, and dried paprika — the smoked kind. I also sprinkled them lightly with thyme and whole coriander seeds. Then I coated them in teriyaki sauce and added the orange juice. Into a tightly closed plastic container, then into the fridge for about 40 hours.

After that, I took the breasts out of the marinade without rinsing them and transferred them to an ovenproof dish. I spooned a little of the marinade left in the container over the duck and put the dish under the oven’s strongest top grill. The important thing at this stage is that the duck must be skin-side up: the fat needs to render first, which saves us searing it in a frying pan. After about 8 minutes, once the skin had rendered nicely and browned a little, I changed the oven to top and bottom heat at 180°C. I turned the breasts over, skin-side down, and roasted them for roughly 1 hour 30 minutes, turning them over twice during that time.

Once the duck was cooked, I took it out and let it cool for roughly 20–30 minutes. Then I removed and discarded the skin, cut the breasts into narrow strips and put them in a glass container. I poured the fat, without the teriyaki, into the container with the meat and pressed it down firmly, so the fat worked its way between the pieces. Into the fridge for 12 hours, overnight in my case. By morning, this duck is perfect on bread, for open sandwiches or sandwiches. Highly recommended, and of course, enjoy!

PS

Below you’ll also see a serving suggestion: perhaps with a nice sauce, chipotle for example, and a fresh vegetable. Although something fermented would be pretty good too.