Duck Sauce for Christmas Eve
Prep 10 min Total 1 hr 10 min
Duck Sauce © kvalifood.com
For me, the hardest thing about cooking Christmas Eve dinner has always been the duck sauce. If you try to make it too refined and technically correct, it ends up as a restaurant sauce - not the one most of us know from Christmas Eve. So the trick is to find a balance, both in the time it takes and the ingredients you have available. This recipe, with a few variations, works for both an everyday Christmas Eve and a more elaborate one.
Ingredients
Yields ½-1 l sauce (for 10-20 people)
Roux for ½ l sauce
- 3 tbsp flour
- 2-3 tbsp duck fat, enough to cover the flour
Stock
- ½-1 l reduced duck stock, or drippings from duck and pork roast (pork drippings make the sauce much better)
Directions
Put the flour and fat into a pan and cook over medium-low heat until the flour no longer tastes raw - under 5 minutes. The flour should not take on much colour.
Then pour in the stock while stirring, and add:
-
salt, if the drippings are not salty enough
-
pepper
-
1-2 stock cubes (only if you are using drippings rather than a good reduced stock - a good homemade stock is usually strong enough on its own)
-
red wine, a small splash (optional, but good - e.g. ½ dl (3 tbsp))
-
heavy cream, a small splash (optional, but good - e.g. ½ dl (3 tbsp))
-
duck fat, extra to finish (up to 1 dl (scant ½ cup))
-
sauce browning, a dash (only if you are not using a dark stock and the roux is lightly coloured)
Simmer until it tastes good. It may taste slightly floury if the roux was not cooked long enough - just let it simmer a little longer.
If you brown the roux to a golden colour it will also need longer simmering, and the more red wine you add, the longer it needs to reduce. Otherwise the flavours will not come together. Sometimes it needs a full hour of simmering before it pulls together. It can taste quite off at first, but it will come around in the end.
Finish by stirring in extra duck fat to taste. It helps both the texture and the flavour - but not so much that the sauce splits.
Notes
The sauce can easily be made 1-2 days ahead and reheated. It will be just as good.
Using stock cubes and sauce browning is not out of any culinary textbook, but here the culinary correctness has to give way to tradition and Christmas Eve practicality. If you roast your duck and pork whole, you rarely get enough flavour out of the drippings alone for a good sauce.
That is one of the reasons I cook the breasts and thighs separately - so I can use the carcass to make a good stock the day before.
That said, I also genuinely enjoy the traditional duck sauce made with stock cubes and plenty of fat.
If you do get around to making duck stock, do it - it makes the sauce much better. If you use duck stock made from bones, reduce it to half or a third so it is strong enough for the sauce.
See Also
