Customer Reviews

The Duck Cookbook

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The title tells it all. This book is all about cooking duck using most techniques common to other types of meats plus at least one which is unique to duck and other fatty fowl. The nine techniques / preparations chapters are:

Sauteing
Braising
Roasting
Confit - a French cooking and preservation method unique, I believe, to ducks and geese
Smoking
Curing
Soups
Salads
Terrines and Mousses

It's interesting that while poaching is a common cooking technique for chicken, the technique is not included here for duck. This technique is largely replaced by the confit method. This is just one clue to the fact that a duck is different from a chicken and methods which work for one will not work for the other. The biggest difference is the level of fat in a duck's skin (but not in it's meat). This is simply due to the fact that ducks can fly and chickens cannot and ducks spend a lot of time in the water. This also explains why almost all duck meat is dark, more similar to a chicken's legs than to it's breast meat.

The difference between ducks and chickens is the main thing which makes this book valuable in itself, especially since many of the techniques appear to be unique to duck cookery. A second great value to the book is that it spells out the right way to cook to avoid fatty flesh if your primary interest is to avoid the saturated fat without loosing out on the great taste of duck.

Aside from the confit method, one of the best values derived from duck is the high quality of the broth one can make from duck, in many ways as valuable and as flavorful as stocks derived from veal. The only drawback is that to make a decent amount of duck broth, you need 12 carcasses or equivalent amount of leftover pieces.

This book is by far the most complete collection of duck recipes I could find. The next closest sources are the Cooks Illustrated book entitled 'Chicken', with about 28 pages of duck recipes and 'Beard on Birds' by James Beard which has 19 pages devoted to duck, including many of the recipes included in Peterson's book. In fact, it is a sign of the times that Beard's book, published in 1979 (and probably date back at least 20 to30 years before that time) have several recipes on wild duck while Peterson deals exclusively with the two most common domesticated duck sources, the Long Island (or Pekin) duck and the Mullard duck, the most common source of cryovac packed duck breast.

Comparing Peterson to Beard, one finds that while Beard has good recipes, equal to his reputation in American culinary education, Peterson has superior recipes and excellently detailed techniques and explanations for the duck specific methods. Worthy of his book on culinary techniques, the photographic instructions on cutting raw duck and carving roasted birds are impeccable.

Peterson's work has placed him high in the ranks of American cookbook authors and this book is a worthy addition to his canon. In past books, I have occasionally found a bit of less than perfect sequencing of steps, so that one must be very careful to read his recipes through and think them through before beginning, but I find none of that clumsiness here. His impeccible descriptions of a sometimes demanding technique are invaluable.

If I collected cookbooks for no other reason than to be an easy source of recipes, this is the type of book I would most quickly buy. Adding to the values is the selection of excellent oversize paged photographs of completed dishes joining the great color photos illustrating the techniques.

Duck has an aura of luxury about it for a very reasonable price (as long as you leave off the foie gras). This book can be a great access to a new culinary direction. Recommended. Just be sure when selecting recipes that the type of duck matches the recipe. Recipes for fatty ducks may give poor results with leaner birds.

I was intrigued with the idea of cooking duck breast, and after I tried and failed, I figured I could benefit from learning as much as possible about the different ways to cook duck. Since I knew how to cook a whole duck, I figured it would not be difficult to cook just the breast, but failed miserably. Consequently, I set out to look for a cookbook that would show me all the secrets of cooking duck.

This book not only did that, but it helped me understand what I did wrong. The recipe I used before purchasing the book was from Spain. Over there, is more common to buy a duck which is smaller than the one you get in the U.S., so I should have cooked at a higher temperature and a bit longer.

I recommend it to those who have never cooked duck before, as well as to those that are interested in gastronomic adventures beyond typical duck recipes.

I've never met a duck I didn't like. If a restaurant has duck on the menu, that's the item I'll order. So buying a copy of The Duck Cookbook by James Petersen (I have several of his other cookbooks) was never really in question. What's surprising is that it took me years, YEARS to actually cook something from it.

Initially, I expected several variations on roast duck, smoked duck, etc. But Petersen actually has few recipes for a whole bird. He found that since the breast is generally overcooked by the time the legs are cooked, most recipes are for duck breasts or duck legs or duck in pieces. That could work fine if I had an easy-to-get-to source for duck parts, but the local supermarkets (even the gourmet stores) sell a whole duck frozen for a not-too-unreasonable price, or they sell small packages of (usually frozen) duck breasts for prices that take my breath away. Unless I'm ready to take a trip to the Chinese market downtown (where duck costs little more than does chicken -- which darnit is as it SHOULD be), I have few opportunities to buy, say, 6 duck legs.

This slowed down my opportunity to cook from The Duck Cookbook, though not my appreciation. The recipes are great -- or at least they seem so. Chapters are devoted to sauteing, braising, roasting, confit, smoking, curing, soups, salads, and terrines and mousses. They range from simple techniques (sauteed duck breasts) to elaborate variations (duck breast with blueberries, or duck breasts with chihuacle negro chiles, raisins, and almonds). There's plenty of recipes for items that use duck as an ingredient, such as hot-and-sour soup with duck (really, why haven't I made this already?!) or duck bouillabaisse. Even better, Petersen demystifies duck cooking, such as what to do with the fat, and is illuminating about other items (he extolled pistachio oil, enough so that I bought an entire tin when the recipe called for only a few tablespoons -- and I don't regret it).

But despite the number of times I've read this cookbook, I've made only two things: basic roast duck (with predictably perfect results), and endive and duck confit salad with Belgian endive and pecans (great starter for a holiday meal). It's made me enthusiastic to use the cookbook more often -- perhaps it's worth the drive to the Chinese grocery after all.

If you have a ready supply of ducks -- get this book. If you're stuck with supermarket options just as I am, it may be of lesser value. But it's still a good "reading" cookbook!

I love duck but could never find a satsifactory recipe for it. Along came The Duck Cookbook and my prayers have been answered. I have made well over half of the recipes and each one is better than the last. If you are a fan of duck, look no further than this wonderful book.

This is a very good one-ingredient book. It contains a number of very varied duck recipes. It doesn't go all the way to include duck blood, but it does cover most of the meat. Naturally from a western tradition, but also with some nice Asian recipes included.

The weakness of the book is the short section about ducks. Many people outside the US buy American books and it would have been nice with a section on French ducks and Chinese ducks as well. And more about American ducks too. Basically more information about the ingredients.

The binding of the book is so sturdy so I don't think it can ever break!

I can recommend this book for all duck lovers and for the rest of you I can really recommend the author of this book.