Duck with apples and honey - simple and delicious

If you are looking for a hot dish recipe forfestive table, then duck with apples and honey should suit you in every way! Firstly, it is a traditional Russian dish. Secondly, this duck is easy to cook. And thirdly, such a duck turns out to be unusually tasty and amazingly beautiful. In general, if you want to surprise and please your guests, as well as feed them deliciously - prepare this wonderful dish.

Ingredients

The duck, naturally, will be stuffed, and we will cook it in the oven. For this ruddy, aromatic, juicy and very, very tasty duck we will need the following ingredients:

Duck carcass weighing 2-3 kilograms;
5-6 large apples of sweet and sour taste;
The head of garlic;
Head of onions;
3-4 tablespoons of honey;
Teaspoon of curry;
Fresh dill and parsley;
A teaspoon of black ground pepper;
2 teaspoons of salt.

Honey for cooking this wonderful duckIt is best to take liquid honey. If you do not have such honey, you can melt it in a water bath. Of course, we will need fresh garlic, but, in extreme cases, it can be replaced with dried (seasoning). Instead of curry, you can use a special spice mix for poultry. It is advisable to choose a larger and fatter carcass, and if possible, buy chilled rather than frozen poultry. If you manage to buy poultry, this will be the best option. Apples should be sweet and sour, or even better - sour. In addition, the apples should be hard and juicy. That's all the features of this dish. Now we just have to cook it and enjoy the divine taste.

Preparation of dishes

The duck carcass needs to be defrosted at room temperature.temperature, rinse thoroughly from the inside, and singe from the outside if necessary. If you singe the carcass, then after that you must wash it and remove all the stumps from the feathers, and then pat the duck dry with a clean towel. Before roasting, the duck needs to be marinated. This is done as follows. Peel the garlic and pass it through a garlic press. In a separate bowl, mix the salt, curry, black pepper and rub this mixture with the garlic. Now take a little mixture in your palm and rub the duck from the inside, and then from the outside. Rub the carcass until the mixture runs out. After this, leave the duck to marinate at room temperature for at least two hours. For greater effect, you can wrap the bird in a plastic bag, and if you decide to leave it overnight, be sure to put it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Prepare the apples for the filling immediately before starting the stuffing. They need to be washed, peeled and cut into quarters. Then remove the hard core from the apples and cut each slice in half. If the apples are very large, they can be cut into cubes, and very small apples in half. Place the apples in a bowl, pour lemon juice or diluted citric acid over them and, if desired, add a little salt and spices. Stuff the prepared carcass with apples through the hole in the duck's belly. To prevent the stuffing from falling out from the top of the carcass (from the hole in the neck), it must be sewn up or twisted into a tourniquet the skin from the neck and tucked inside the carcass. When the duck is stuffed with apples, plug the hole in the belly with a whole peeled onion. If the hole is too large, sew it up over the edge with a strong and thick cotton thread. Now you can put the duck with apples in the oven.

Cooking and serving a dish

For baking we need a deepa baking tray, which must first be greased with duck fat or vegetable oil. It is better not to use butter for this purpose, as it will start to burn in the oven. So, we put the bird (back down) on a baking tray and put it in a preheated oven. The suitable temperature for baking is from 180 to 250 degrees. At a lower temperature, the duck will cook for a very long time, and if the temperature exceeds 250 degrees, then your duck will turn out raw inside and burnt on the outside. To cook the duck, we need from one to two and a half hours. During this time, you need to periodically remove the baking tray from the oven and pour fat and juice that will be melted from the carcass over the bird. This can be done with a regular tablespoon, carefully scooping fat from the baking tray and evenly pouring it over the duck. If too little juice is released from the carcass, then you can add a little water to the baking tray. About fifteen minutes before our dish is ready, take the baking tray out of the oven and coat the entire bird with honey. You don’t need to grease only the back. Put the honey-coated duck back in the oven and continue baking until fully cooked, but don’t baste it with fat. You can tell if it’s ready by making a deep puncture where the thigh meets the body. If the duck produces clear juice without blood, it’s ready. Take the finished bird out of the oven, remove the onion, remove the stitches and take out the apples. Cut the carcass into portions and place it in a pile on a large platter. Place the apples around the pile and baste everything with the fat from the baking tray. Garnish with herbs and serve. That’s the whole secret of cooking duck with apples and honey. Try it! The result will pleasantly surprise you. Enjoy cooking and bon appetit!