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elleng

(130,126 posts)
Wed Apr 19, 2017, 02:21 AM Apr 2017

Become a Disciple of Duck Wings.

'With chicken, I covet the wings. With duck, not really; they tend to be sinewy and dry, without chicken’s succulence — or so I thought.

Then I ordered the duck wings at Upland in the Kips Bay neighborhood in Manhattan and instantly became a duck wing disciple.

The fried wings from that first encounter a little over two years ago, made by the chef Justin Smillie, combined crisp skin, rich meat and gamy flavor emboldened by Asian seasonings.

Since then, I’ve seen duck wings on menus in New York, Chicago and Florida. Günter Seeger has served them at his namesake restaurant in the West Village; Gary King, the new chef at NoMo Kitchen in SoHo, offers them, too. Mr. King’s version follows Mr. Smillie’s recipe; he was the former chef de cuisine at Upland. . .

So I asked Mr. Smillie to share his technique. It’s a three-step project, mostly unattended.

First, you cure the wings (having defrosted them if they were frozen) with a generous rub of salt, some sugar and spices. Mr. Smillie uses coriander, Aleppo pepper, fennel seeds and granulated garlic; I opted for Chinese five-spice with salt and sugar

Leave them in the refrigerator for 24 to 36 hours. Then rinse and dry them and give them the confit treatment. Mr. Smillie poaches them in duck fat for three hours. I accomplished much the same by arranging them in a single layer in a large roasting pan, covering the pan with foil, and letting them bake at 225 degrees for three hours.

I then removed them from the pan and refrigerated them, first draining all excess fat back into the pan. I strained the fat and refrigerated it for future use, like frying potatoes. While the wings were still warm, I peeled off and discarded the skin, which can be rubbery when you fry or grill them at home.

At this point, they are ready for the final treatment. Or, as Mr. Smillie suggested, they can be set aside in the refrigerator or freezer to finish cooking and serve later.

“They hold up to various cooking techniques,” he said. “I fry them, but I’ve also done them on the grill and hot-roasted them.”

I tried frying and, now on the cusp of the outdoor season, grilling. For effective frying, you really need a professional flash fryer. When I fried them in an inch of hot duck fat, the wings were not as crisp as in restaurants.

Without a doubt, the home cook’s route to success is swabbing them with a tangy barbecue marinade and searing them on the grill.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/dining/duck-wings.html?

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Become a Disciple of Duck Wings. (Original Post) elleng Apr 2017 OP
Try getting them in flyover country Warpy Apr 2017 #1

Warpy

(110,900 posts)
1. Try getting them in flyover country
Wed Apr 19, 2017, 03:38 AM
Apr 2017

We see frozen duck Thanksgiving-Xmas, maybe a lonely frozen goose or two, and only whole. Dismembered duck can be found only in big bicoastal cities where restaurants do things like pan seared duck breasts and deboned duck legs and the wings are leftovers. Maybe Chicago has dismembered duck, forget the rest of flyover country. We're lucky to see the frozen whole birds once in a great while.

These days, I'd settle for chicken parts with the bone and skin instead of the tasteless boneless, skinless stuff we see here because all the good stuff is going into McNuggets and dog food.

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