Dark Stock of Duck - Suitable For Sauce
Dark stock of duck © kvalifood.com
Duck stock is not often used for anything but duck sauce. Duck soup is quite unusual :-) But duck sauce is a classic, so here is a stock that is very suitable for that. In denmark it is mostly eaten around christmas eve, but it really should be eaten all year round.
Ingredients
yields approx:
2 liters (quarts) duck stock or 0.7 to 1 liter (quarts) of strong duck sauce stock
- 2-4 carcasses of duck, including wings and giblets
- 3-400 g (10 oz - 13 oz) parsnip
- 3-400 g (10 oz - 13 oz) carrot
- 3-400 g (10 oz - 13 oz) potatoes
- 3-400 g (10 oz - 13 oz) onion
- 10 peppercorns
- 4-6 bay leaves
Directions
Put the duck pieces in a roasting pan and brown them. Approximately 1 hour at 200 °C (390°F) convection.
Drain the juices after half an hour.put them into your stock saucepan and turn the duck pieces so that they brown on all sides.
Wash the vegetables thoroughly and remove the worst brown spots. Cut them into approx. 1 cm (½") slices.
Brown them in the same way as you did the duck pieces. Approximately 1 hour at 200 °C (390°F) convection. Turn them over once in a while to brown evenly.
Put all the ingredients into a pot and let it slowly simmer for 2-4 hours. The longer the better. It does not hurt to let it stand overnight and simmer. But then you should see almost no bubbles.
Sieve the stock and separate the fat. Either by skimming it of the top of the stock with a ladle, or by cooling down the stock overnight, and then remove the fat from the solidified stock.
The 2 liter (2 quarts) stock in this recipe should be further boiled until it is reduced to between ½ and 1/3 the amount. You have to do it by taste to see if it is of sauce strength.
It does take a little practice, because there is no salt in the stock, which there will be in a sauce. It will taste much stronger when there is salt added.
Notes
In the video I use the carcasses from 4 pcs 2,600 g (6 lbs) ducks. That makes the stock somewhat stronger than usual, so there is enough stock to make a sauce for 20 people.
You can also get an excellent sauce using the carcasses from 2 x 4000 g (9 lbs) ducks.
You can also add thyme, allspice and juniper berries to the stock as spices. Bay leaves is the most important one though.
If you use other forms of root vegetables, be sure not to use too much of one that is too dominant in the taste. For instance you should only use celeriac and fennel sparsely. Onions are the most important vegetable. Always put plenty of those in.