Soooo... way back in Home Economics class, I was forced to wave a lighter around in the depths of a huge gas oven while hoping desperately that my paw didn't go up in a ball of nuggetty flame once the damn thing finally lit. This led to (what I am told) is an unreasonably traumatised nugget's fear of ovens of any sort. GETITAWAYFROMMEEEEE! AAAA this recipe sez 'Oven', I dun need this steenking recipe!
>.> Thus, this here tasty roasted miso-5spice duck of doooomy doom represents an impressive evolution of the nugget's cheffery skeelz. It is my very first oven-thingie ever, and I didn't even use a spice pack! Of course, this also means the recipe below will be in even more nuggetly vague measurements than usual.
Though I am juicy golden-battered chicken to the core, I must confess, I loooooooooooooooooooove duck. >.> Especially duck legs. I've really been missing cheap roasted duck legs with all their drippy slurpy fatty juices. Luckily, these turned out wonderful. They don't exactly have the traditional taste of the duck legs I've been missing, but I don't care! Nao I can haz juicy fatty drippy slurpy duck legs anytime I want, yay!
As a (semi) independent endorsement, the nuggetboy ate 3 of the 4 duck legs pictured here, and they weren't small. XD
Roasted 5-spice Miso Duck
- 4 duck legs (South Melbourne market had them labelled as 'Duck Maryland')
- 4 potatoes, quartered
- Some butter for the potatoes
- 2 heaped (and I mean really really heaped, talking 2 inches high here...) tablespoons of miso paste
- 3ish glugs of chinese cooking wine
- couple of shakes of 5 spice powder
- a few glops of honey
- 3ish glops of ginger (I use tube stuff cause I'm a lazy nugget) / 3 teaspoons of finely chopped ginger
- 2ish glops of lemongrass (see above about the ginger...)
- 2ish glops of garlic (see above about the ginger again...)
- 1 glop of oyster sauce
Glop: The amount of thick sauce that glops out of a bottle in a single squeeze or shake.
Make da stuff
- Mix everything that isn't duck, potato, or butter together until it forms a smooth paste.
- Give the duck a sexy massage by rubbing the paste into every nook and cranny.
- Cover duck and stuff it in fridge.
- Ignore duck for minimum 2 hours, but best for at least 6 hours. (Miso isn't actually meant to be a marinade, so it seems to take longer.)
- Take marinated duck out of fridge, and arrange on some kind of baking container that won't let the tasty duck juices run off and drip into the oven. No duck juices for the oven! *selfish*
- Preheat oven to 190C (mine has a fan).
- Stuff duck in oven. Duck should sit in oven for about 1 hour.
- Parboil potatoes.
- Fish parboiled potatoes out of pot, slather them in butter. (The parboiling took me about 15 minutes.)
- Pull duck outta oven, plop potatoes into baking container thing. Ideally the potatoes should sit in areas with lots of juicy fatty duck juice, but if you haven't got enough space (I didn't), just stuff them in where you can.
- Plop duck and potatoes back in oven for 45 more minutes / until the hour is up. (Depends on how long the parboiling took.)
- Remoof duck and potatoes. Let rest for 5ish minutes, or for as long as you can control yourself and/or other denizens, anyway.
- NOM! NOOOOM! NOmNomNOMONOmoMONoMOOM!
- That is all.