The first step is to score the fat to help it render more efficiently. Ducks are busy commuter birds who need lots of fat to fuel them through long flights. This thick fat, when rendered down to a slender and succulent layer beneath crisp skin, is a culinary marvel, but you can easily end up with too much of a good thing. Scoring gives the fat more exposure to heat by increasing the surface area and allowing it to render faster.
Because I prefer some fat left under the skin, I make very shallow cuts in a tight crisscross pattern across the surface of the duck. With a sharp knife, this requires virtually no pressure: I just slide the blade along, while barely breaking through the skin. If you prefer to render out more of the fat, simply make deeper cuts.
That layer of fat protects the meat, allowing you to cook it gently and evenly; because duck is best served medium-rare, that extra protection is one of the core reasons why searing it to the perfect degree of doneness is so easy.
Cutting through to the flesh, however, will expose the meat to direct heat, overcooking it before enough fat has rendered out, so maintain a delicate touch while scoring the skin. After scoring, I season the duck with kosher salt, heavily on the fat side and just lightly on the flesh side.
Calling this a "seared" or "pan-roasted" duck breast feels somewhat misleading, because both those terms imply high heat. Instead, this method cooks cold duck breast in a cold pan over low heat.
When duck breast is seared at a higher temperature, the flesh quickly cooks before enough fat has rendered out, leaving you with a thick, flabby layer of fat over tough meat.
When you use gentle heat, the fat has time to render off, while heat slowly transfers to the flesh through the buffer of the thick skin layer. This gives you tender flesh with a minimal gradient, as well as delicious, crisp skin. The trick to cooking duck breast at home is to figure out how to hit that sweet spot on your own burners. With high temperatures leaving excess fat behind, and low temperatures resulting in overcooked meat, we need to find that ideal temperature zone.
I firmly believe that the best way to do so is by listening to the sound of sizzles. Hence, follow our process to make a good meal and prevent unwanted bacteria. If you like medium rare ducks, make sure that they get raised in a hygienic environment a germ-free one is the best to lessen the chance of virus infection.
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