Tea Smoked Duck

More and more I'm all about smoked meats.  Recently someone mentioned tea smoked duck and I thought I'd give it a go.  I've never cooked duck before but  I've had Duck a l'Orange, so I wondered if I could someway infuse the orange into the ducks without having to make the sauce.

First things first, I need a couple of ducks.  Ducks are usually 5 to 6 lbs so I thought I'd start with two.  That's because if it turns out good we'll all eat a lot.  The other reason is that if a screw something up hopefully one of them will be salvageable.

So I send my wife off to the local Chinese market.  And talk about fresh, these guys were killed, gutted, and defeathered while she was waiting.  Now that's service!

They were both right at 6 pounds.

That's my best duck face.  Now, off with their heads!  How French is that?

I planned to do an overnight brine.  I brined them separately using plastic trash bags tied in a knot.  They wouldn't fit into zip lock bags.

In each bag went:

1 tbs kosher salt
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp black pepper
4 fresh thyme sprigs
2 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs
1 small white onion (cut into 8 wedges)
1 cup of Madeira wine
1 cup of chicken stock
1 chopped carrot
1 chopped celery rib
4 oranges halved
1 pint of orange juice.

Into the refrigerator they went.

The next day (about 14 hours later) I took them out of the brine and put them on the counter to come up to close to room temperature.  I scored the skin with a fork.  This is to give the rendering fat a place to exit.  I was careful not to cut into the meat because that can make it very dry.

I didn't have enough room to hang them in the smoker so I used my beer can chicken colonoscopy stands.  Instead of beer I had the cans filled with orange juice.

Instead of being smart and buying loose tea I bought 3 boxes of tea bags.  I'm such an idiot.  So there I was cutting each tea bag open to get the tea out.  60 bags later I had enough to start with.

I put the tea in a small aluminum loaf pan with just enough water to make it damp.  I use the same pans when smoking with wood.  They hold up to the heat and after you're done and it's cooled off you can just throw them away.

So the charcoal is up to 250 degrees and we're off to the races.  The tea put out an amazing volume of smoke... but only for about 10 minutes.  That's when I switched to apple wood that had been soaked in orange juice.  Any type of fruit wood will work.

Because I have a side smoker I rotated the ducks about every 20 minutes.

At about 4 hours I had 150 degrees on an instant read thermometer.  I doubled the charcoal and got the heat up to 475 degrees real fast to get the skin good and brown.  15 minutes later they were at 170 degrees and done.

It was a hit.  The skin was crisp and the meat succulent.  The scoring helped render out enough fat so it wasn't greasy.  I was afraid that I had over done it with all the orange components but surprisingly enough there was just a very mild orange/apple taste to it.

I served with with baked white asparagus wrapped in center cut bacon and mashed potatoes.

There were no left overs.

I plan to do some other recipes using duck but from now on I'm only going to buy breasts and legs.