Roast Duck Extravaganza!

The very first night that we met our friends Brock and Josh, we were sitting at the beer gardens by CentralWorld asking each other the typical questions that expats ask when meeting a fellow expat for the first time, such as; "How long have you been in Thailand" ,"What do you do","Where do you live" etc. Eventually the discussion came around to eating and cooking (as it usually does) and when we casually mentioned that we had an oven in our apartment, Brock immediately exclaimed " I am going to roast a duck in your oven!"

Fast forward five months, and we finally got our act together for the roast duck extravaganza. The adventure began with a trip to the Klong Toei Market to pick up a duck as well as the ingredients to make the duck sauce.

After wandering through the market for a while, we made our way to the duck section. There we found a booth with duck and duck parts as well as live ducks. I assumed that we would get a duck that was already dead- but boy was I wrong. The adorable girl running the duck booth, after hearing Brock's request for a whole duck, proceeded to pull a live duck from a cage and tried to hand it to us. After some very disturbing pantomime, we finally got the message across that we would prefer the duck to be deceased. We were afraid that she was going to kill the duck right in front of us, but luckily she took it away and came back with it all wrapped up in a plastic bag.

It wasn't until we arrived at our apartment that we discovered that they neglected to gut and clean the duck. Luckily, the internet was there to save the day! It's amazing what you can find on YouTube. Athough watching men say things like "You don't want to rupture the gall bladder cause that will taint the meat." is not really the most enjoyable way to spend a Saturday morning.

After watching a few videos about how to gut a duck, Brock tackled the disgusting task. I don't want to talk about the disgusting details too much, but I was amazed at what came out of that duck! Needless to say I was impressed with how well we were able to keep our gag reflex under control, although I think Brock almost lost it when the metal I.D tag on the duck scraped the cutting board and it sounded just like a duck quack. 

Brock carefully making the first incision

After the disgusting part was done, we worked on prepping the the bird for it's 4 hour roast in the oven.

Removing pin feathers

Cutting strategic slits to make the skin delicious

After hourly flips and basting with an orange tamarind sauce, the duck was ready to be served to the hungry masses who spent hours drooling as the smell of roast duck filled our apartment. I don't really have any details on the recipe used or the specific techniques, but perhaps Brock will write about them on his blog.

After this successful duck roasting, we've already started planning for our next cooking adventure, so stay tuned!

Who wants some duck?