A secret little jar has been tucked into my refrigerator for the past week. It is a cooking item that came from an unlikely place: the fat off of a duck we enjoyed in at least four different ways over the Thanksgiving holiday. I like to think of that duck, which we purchased from Bob and Mary Pratt of the Elihu Farm in Easton, NY, as the gift that keeps on giving.
My husband Jim and I visited the Pratt's farm about eighteen months ago, and saw the ducks they were raising skipping around in a field and scooting off into a pond. We had gotten a duck from another one of our favorite farmers last winter and had prepared it Chinese-style, as a Peking-style duck. We loved the preparation so much that we decided that we wanted to do it again for Thanksgiving. The Pratt's had had some of their flock recently returned from the butcher, and were happy to reserve one for us.
The Peking-style duck, done the right way, is actually three courses. It takes about a day and a half of advance preparation, and can be a pretty heavy eating experience. Jim and I love to eat, but we don't like to gorge so we split the three courses into three or more meals, which makes the intense level of preparation worth the effort.
But how did I end up with a 16 ounce jar of bright yellow duck fat? The answer begins with a description of how the duck is prepared.
The first step, after washing and patting the duck dry, is to pour one quarter of a cup of vodka over it. The vodka helps dry the duck skin and enhances its flavor a bit. We put it in the vodka and let it marinate overnight. The second step comes the next morning: the duck is rubbed with honey and then hung by the neck to dry in a cool, breezy space for at least four hours. We put it in our mudroom with an electric fan blowing gently next to it, and let it dry for about six hours.
Then, comes the roasting. The duck is placed on a roasting rack over a pan of water and roasted at 375 degrees for about thirty minutes, then at 300 degrees for about an hour. One then turns the temperature back up to 375 and continues to roast the duck until it is tender. We had a 4-1/2 pound duck and expected the cooking process to take about three hours. The duck was done, however, in about a half hour after we turned the heat back up, or in about two hours total.
The first course is served with handmade mandarin pancakes, which are simple crepes made of flour, water, and sesame oil, and with either hoisin sauce or a fruity jam and some onions on the side. The meal looks deceptively light; in reality, it is quite filling. After we ate, I cut the remaining meat into pieces that would be suitable for a stir fry and stored them in the refrigerator. I also wrapped the carcass into a plastic bag and stashed it away, as well. The stir fry was to be the second course, enhanced with crisp green beans, carrots, garlic, and onion. The carcass would make a rich brothy soup for the third course.
As I was putting away the first course, however, I lifted the roasting rack off of its pan and noticed a rich golden residue had gathered in the water. A quick finger taste revealed that fat from the duck along with the honey and perhaps some traces of the vodka had accumulated to create a rich savory mixture. It seemed too good to throw away so I carefully poured it into a small cooking pot, figuring I could make a gravy with it later.
Chinese style stir fries and American style gravies, however, are not exactly compatible in a culinary sense. When we made our duck stir fry a couple of days later, I did it as a fairly dry mixture because the meat was so rich with fat. The liquid sat in the refrigerator for two more days, and I fully planned to throw it out.
And then a friend suggested I save the duck fat for cooking such things as hash brown potatoes and pie crusts. Suddenly, it seemed that we had gained a few more additional meals from the duck.
I got the pot out of the refrigerator and immediately noticed that the fat had congealed. I scooped it out and put it in a small jar, marveling at its vivid yellow hue. And, underneath the fat, lay one more find: a defatted light golden-brown broth. I resolved to use it to cook risotto.
The lingering remnants of honey, duck meat, and vodka combined to create a deliciously light flavorful broth that the starchy arborio rice used in risotto eagerly soaked up. We scraped the pan clean of the risotto, and began looking forward to meal number four: the traditional third course of a Peking-style duck meal, which is a noodle soup.
And, in the meantime, the duck fat formed the basis for a crust for an apple pie, oil for frying potatoes, and a moistening agent for the leftover duck stir fry. About half of the bottle still sits in the refrigerator, waiting to be used, and we have requested another duck from the Pratt's to eat over Christmas.
So what is the point of such a story? There is some back story to this question, too. Last spring, I was at a health and wellness conference sponsored by my college, and found myself chatting with a student who had decided she no longer wanted to eat meat. She told me that one of her reasons for going vegan was reading the grotesque accounts of the Chicago meat-packing industry in the late nineteenth century that are documented in Upton Sinclair's classic book The Jungle. I knew those accounts well, and when after a four-year period in my own life in which I stopped eating meat I decided to resume eating meat, the industrial practices of the early twenty-first century factory farms weighed heavily in my mind. I grew up in a family where my parents are lifelong vegetarians but, as immigrants from India, wanted their children to acculturate to American life and saw eating meat as a way for us to do so, figuring that we could make the decision later in life whether to keep eating meat or not. Because of this experience, I never have had ethical qualms about eating animals, though I certainly respect those who do. I do, however, do not like to see food of any sort going to waste -- especially if the source of the food was once a mammal, a fish, or a bird. And I don't like to see animals suffer in life, even if they are being raised with the intention of being turned eventually into human food.
As a result, my husband and I have tried our best to buy meat from farmers or fisherman whom we know personally and often have taken advantages of opportunities to visit their farms. From these experiences, we also have learned that one can honor an animal that one eats not only by giving it a good life while it is alive but also by ensuring that as much of it is consumed as possible so that it's life is not one that was considered expendable. I realize that this is a hard concept to get across in the polarizing debates over vegetarianism and veganism, but I feel that it is an important point. There are plenty of good reasons why one should not eat meat -- ranging from personal religious and ethical beliefs to the planet's sustainability and lifelong health. There also are plenty of good reasons to eat meat -- including nutritional benefits, the gaining of personal energy, and lifelong health. Where the bridge exists between these extremes is perhaps in the degree to which one consumes meat and the how. How much do you eat at a single meal? Are you overeating or are you taking in just the optimal amount that your body needs? What are you doing with your leftovers? How much of the animal are you consuming? Can you honor the meal more by stretching it into four, five, six, or even more meals? Are you doing what you can to ensure that as little as possible goes to waste?
For those reasons, the jar of duck fat feels like a gift. It is a reminder to me of how the abundance of a life can be sustained.
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