Choose the "victim"
Well, let's go choose a ducky - now they are instore, and the market is full. Just like the brides in the city of Ivanovo. For baking, it is better to choose a younger one. She will cook faster and will be softer. On the shelves of shops, mainly carcasses of ducks from poultry farms. There ducks are fed for 60 days, so you can not worry and choose by size or price. The domestic duck is more delicious and more useful than the factory duck, but the ducklings are kept all summer season, and by autumn-winter they can be up to six months. Yes, and the old tribal old women, too, have to go somewhere - in soup or roast. Young duck - up to 2 kg, skin light, paws of yellow color. The color of the fat is white. The old duck has yellowish skin, orange legs. Color of fat is yellow. The older the duck, the more intense the color of the feet and fat. The weight of such a duck can reach 3-5 kg. 
Treatment of carcass for cooking
We begin to process the duck. Frozen carcass thaws for a long time, therefore it is better to have time up to 12 hours for defrosting. If we bought a steam or chilled duck - no questions. Remove the giblets. They do not have to be thrown away, useful. Duck scalded with boiling water, remove "hemp" - parts of feathers, like the needles of a hedgehog. When you have performed such a procedure, we dry the carcass with a towel and sing over the fire. Be sure to remove the fat gland at the base of the tail. Its contents can spoil any dish. The main recipes for cooking are the same as for any meat or poultry:
- Baking whole duck;
- Preparation of chopped duck;
- Duck soups and broths.
Baking whole
Before baking it is necessary to separate the bony partswings. They will dry up and will not be edible. And they can be added to giblets in order to cook broth one day. The same is done with the neck and paws. Fat from the abdomen is removed. Duck smeared with garlic, crushed in the press and mixed with salt and pepper. Then the carcass should be wrapped in a film and left for a couple of hours. Garlic mass can be replaced with mustard or rub the duck with a mixture of herbs. This is done so that the meat is soaked with the aroma of spices. And the mustard softens the meat slightly. If we plan to simply bake a duck, without stuffing, then it only remains to wait until it is marinated. And if you decide to bake a stuffed duck, then we'll prepare the filling. Variants of fillings recipes:
- Cereals;
- Fruit;
- Vegetables.
Stuffing cereals You can make this stuffing: 2/3 cups of buckwheat, duck or chicken giblets, raw egg, onion, garlic. Buckwheat gently. In the meat grinder turn raw giblets, you can only liver the birds. Finely chop onion. Garlic crush with a knife and grind. Mix everything, hammer an egg. Slightly warm the mass in a frying pan with fat until excessive moisture evaporates. Add salt and pepper to taste. Buckwheat is a good substitute for rice and millet. Fruit stuffing Traditional recipe is a duck with apples or quince. One duck will need 4-5 apples or quinces. Apples are best to choose sour, with dense flesh. Well suited antonovki or renet Simirenko. Fruit cut into quarters, remove the seed chambers. Cut each quarter in half. Pieces will be just right. Apples can be supplemented with dried fruits: prunes, figs, dried apricots. Pre-soak them in wine, cognac or pour boiling water for a few minutes to soften. Different variations of the combination of fruits in the filling will give flavoring nuances in each individual case. Duck with vegetables Vegetable fillings can be varied, combining them with spices or creating a multicolored set of vegetables, your own recipes. For example, cut the large carrot washers, potatoes into 2 cm cubes, add sliced celery, small red onions, whole cloves of garlic, black olives. With a duck, sauerkraut is a good combination. It should be slightly extinguished with the addition of spices and onions. Here, too, different variations of recipes with the addition of fried mushrooms, smoked meats, apples or quinces are possible (they need to be cut smaller than for a duck with apples), prunes. We fill the duck with stuffing. The edges of the abdomen are connected and sewn with a thread. You can make them with wooden toothpicks. It's time to put in the oven. Several secrets of baking ducks. First of all, the oven should be heated up to 250 degrees. The first 10 minutes we will withstand it in this heat. Then the temperature will be reduced to 200 degrees for another 10 minutes, and finally prepare it at 180 degrees. The second secret - if the duck is fried on a baking sheet, without parchment, bag or foil, it should be watered about once every 15 minutes with juice and fat, which accumulate in the pan. The willingness of a duck is easily determined by piercing it with a knife. The flowing juice will be transparent when the duck is sufficiently baked. To overdo it in the oven is undesirable, the meat will become dry. The duck, baked in the oven, is ready. We take it out and put it on the dish. We remove the threads or toothpicks, we take out the filling with a spoon and spread it around the duck. We admire the result and ... call everyone to the table. 
Soups and broths from ducklings
Baked ducks are not for a daily meal,only for the holiday. How to eat a duck on weekdays? First of all - you can cook soups and broths. A duck is too big to cook it whole, like a chicken. The family for soup or broth is enough 1 kg ducklings. For cooking shurpa according to the recipe, duck meat with bones is divided 5-6 pieces and fry, stacking pieces of leather down. When the fat is over, turn over. Add 3 chopped onions and the same amount of carrots, fry, put out for half an hour. Then add water and prepare a shurpa. In an hour, add five potatoes, a laurel, pepper-peas, and salt. How potatoes are ready, add the greens of dill and parsley. If during cooking broth in it to pour from a half cup of rice, millet or buckwheat, and then do the same as when cooking shurpa, you get a "hunting" soup. But we do not confess to anyone that we bought a duck in a supermarket around the corner. On bouillon soup from ducklings it is possible to prepare borsch or shchi. There are so many housewives, so many recipes. Let everyone prepare his own. And for a broth with noodles, you can also take ducklings instead of chicken. We just need not forget that it will take longer to cook this soup.
Second course options
And what do we have for the second? Well, of course - a duck. You can cook it with seeds, according to the recipe for chahokhbili or roast. For roast we cut 1 kg of ducklings into portions and roast without fat - the fat will be drowned from the duck. Add the chopped onions - 1-2 heads, fry a little more. 5-6 medium potatoes with pieces of fried separately until blush. And then combine the meat and potatoes in the brazier, add carrots for beauty - cubes, laurel and pepper. Half a glass of sour cream - we send it to the same brazier and pour boiling water - about a glass. We heat up to boiling, salt and reduce fire - let it be quietly stewed from an hour. If you want something Caucasian and sharp, let it be not a dagger, but a variation of the recipe of the Georgian Chakhokhbili. Let's not be boring - where is that pheasant sitting, from which to make chahokhbili correctly? And there is a duck. We cut, fold in the chicken, fry under the lid. Piece five tomatoes are peeled and cut off finely. Or we take a couple of spoons of tomato paste. Five bulbs and two Bulgarian peppers cut into half rings, thick. All the vegetables in turn, with an interval of 10 minutes, add to the duck. Salt to taste. Extinguish with an hour. Cilantro and basil will add the necessary flavor to the dish - we will add them. Hops-suneli, hot peppers and garlic at the very end of cooking - so that the aroma does not disappear. So, replacing those kinds of meat that the tradition recommends, you can cook from the duck innumerable dishes of national cuisines. Try it, it will be delicious and always in a new way.
