Easy Roast Duck
Updated Feb. 3, 2025
- Total Time
- 1 hour
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 14- to 5-pound duck
- Freshly ground black pepper
- ¼cup soy sauce, more or less
Nutritional analysis per serving (4 servings)
1497 calories; 145 grams fat; 49 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 69 grams monounsaturated fat; 19 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 0 grams sugars; 44 grams protein; 1107 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove giblets and neck from duck cavity and discard or reserve for another use. Cut off excess fat from duck cavity.
- Step 2
Place duck, breast side down (wings up), on a rack in a roasting pan; add water to come just below the rack. Sprinkle duck with pepper and brush with a little soy sauce.
- Step 3
Roast 30 minutes, undisturbed. Prick the back all over with point of a sharp knife, then flip bird onto its back. Sprinkle with pepper and brush with soy sauce again. Add a little more water to the pan if the juices are spattering (carefully--you don't want to get water on the duck).
- Step 4
Roast 20 minutes, then prick the breast all over , and brush with soy sauce. Roast 10 minutes; brush with soy sauce. Roast 5 or 10 minutes more if necessary, or until duck is a glorious brown all over and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh measures at least 155 degrees. Let rest 5 minutes before carving and serving.
- There are four challenges to roasting a duck by the simple method given here. The first is spattering. All that fat can make a mess of your oven. But the solution is simple: keep a thin layer of water in the roasting pan. The fat drips into it and stays there. (You'll need a rack to elevate the duck, but you should be using one for a crisp bird anyway.) The second challenge is to achieve a uniformly brown color. I cheat a little bit here and brush the roasting duck with soy sauce, which works like a charm. The third challenge lies in the carving; a duck is a little more complicated than a chicken. The best way is to cut on either side of the rib cage to remove the two breast halves, then cut the legs off the carcass. The rest is for picking. Finally, there's the basic challenge of having enough to go around, for a roast duck can easily be finished by two people. If you want to serve four, roast two, or plan on a lot of side dishes.
Private Notes
Comments
Instead of water in the roasting pan which which others observed will steam the duck skin, I placed a layer of thick slices of potatoes, carrots and onions in the pan. The vegetables roasted in the duck fat. Yum.
Water in a roasting pan creates steam, so I took the advice of another cook here and put a layer of potatoes and onions in the bottom of the pan, then placed the duck on a grill, on top. There was no splattering, no smoke, and the duck browned beautifully. I wanted the potatoes and onions to get crispy, so when the duck was done, I took it out of the oven, turned on the broiler, and put the vegetables back in for 10 minutes. Very easy and delicious!
I make duck this way about once every six weeks and it's great. I use the left-overs for duck fried rice!
Easy and delicious. Really succulent duck with crispy skin and not too fatty. Won't roast duck any other way now.
Following other comments, I placed thinly sliced onions under the rack and used sliced oranges inside the cavity. I intend to make duck salad (The Lark's recipe in Detroit, now closed) which adds chutney, curry, mayo and celery mixture for an amazing tasty dish). I used 450 for both sides and still was undercooked.
The duck inside the pan looks like its cooked just right.
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