Ingredients
- A whole duck
- Maltose or honey for the skin
- Scallions and cucumber
- Wheat wrappers
- Sweet bean or hoisin-style sauce
How it is cooked
- Air is pumped under the skin, or the skin is otherwise separated, so it can dry.
- The bird is hung and roasted in a hot oven until the skin is lacquered and the fat renders.
- It is carved at the table. You wrap skin and meat with scallion in a thin wheat pancake and a swipe of sauce.
- The rest of the bird often comes back as stir-fry or soup. That is a second course, not a different duck.
Taste
Crisp skin, soft fat, and a little sweetness against scallion. The meat should not be the driest thing on the plate. One duck feeds two or three.
Possible allergens
- Wheat in the noodles or wrappers, and often in soy sauce.
- Soy sauce, which in China is often brewed with wheat.
- The sauce is sweet and thick and not a place to assume there is no wheat or sesame.
- A shared wok or a house chili oil can add peanut, sesame, or shellfish even when the recipe does not.