Duck a l’orange with honey glazed chips

Duck really is one of our favourites and it’s important to ensure you get a real quality piece of duck when cooking this particular type of poultry.  When it comes to finding quality duck in a supermarket, it’s hard to look past Gressingham duck.  Gressingham have a great variety of duck recipes as well as recipes for other poultry including turkey and goose.  Regulars to the blog will know that we enjoy duck, especially when we dine.  Duck a l’orange is a classic dish and taking inspiration from one of Glessingham’s own recipes we put a bit of a twist on this classic dish.  Here is our duck a l’orange with honey and thyme glazed chips.

Ingredients:

• 2 duck breasts
• 4 Potatoes, peeled and chipped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 120g honey
• bunch thyme
• 2 large oranges

Cooking and preparation time – 35 minutes

Serves 2

1. Segment your oranges

Before you begin cooking be sure to prepare all of your ingredients.  Pre-heat your oven to 180C (160C fan oven) and begin to segment your orange.  Take one of your large oranges and peel and segment it.  Zest and juice the other large orange and set this aside with your other ingredients.

2. Prepare your duck breasts

To prepare your duck breasts it’s best to wash them first (always do this with poultry) and pat dry.  Then take a sharp knife and score the skin of the duck breast.  Season the breast with salt and pepper, put a pan onto a medium heat and place the duck on to the pan, skin side down.  You do not need to use any oil when cooking duck as there is enough fat in the skin to do all the cooking you need.  Cook the duck for 6-8 minutes or until the skin is gold and crisp and then turn and cook for a further minute on the other side.  Drain any excess duck fat (this can be used to shallow fry your chips if you wish).

3. Get your chips on

For this dish we decided to go with chips as they are much quicker to cook.  Add your chips to a pan while you are beginning to cook your duck and drain when you take your duck of the heat.  Alternatives to home-cut chips could be baby potatoes (blanch in boiling water) or potato cubes cooked in the duck fat.

4. Place duck in oven and prepare your sauce

Once you have got the skin of your duck nice and crisp, place it on an oven rack and cook in the oven for 4-6 minutes (leave in for an extra 3-4 minutes if you want it cooked medium to well).  With the pan that you cooked the duck in, begin to add the ingredients for your sauce.  Add the honey, then the orange segments, juice and zest, and add the garlic and thyme.  Reduce this down and then add the chips or your choice of potato.

5. Reduce sauce and glaze duck

Reduce the sauce down until it starts to become a little sticky and at this point remove your duck from the oven.  Take some of the sauce and apply it to the duck skin to create a glaze.  Put the duck back in the oven for another 2-3 minutes before removing and resting for 5 minutes.  Once your duck has rested, carve it and serve with the honey glazed chips and enjoy.

If you’re a fan of duck, we’d love to hear what is your favourite type of duck dish.  Maybe it’s something we can look to replicate in the coming weeks.  Let us know by commenting below or sharing your thoughts with us on our Facebook and Twitter page.

For some great duck recipes be sure to visit the Gressingham recipes page.