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Smoked duck is my favorite way to save our hunting season’s bounty for the warmer months.
Holly and I spend most of our winter days hunting ducks and geese, and we eat them several times a week over the winter months. In that time I do a lot of preserving: Mostly confit, salami, cured goose “prosciutto.” But I will also smoke duck and goose and freeze them for the rest of the year.
Those who know their way around a smoker know that fat is a critical element in the process. Fat absorbs the smoke’s flavor better than the meat itself. This is why you see lots of recipes for smoked pork and salmon; both are fatty animals. So are waterfowl. Domestic ducks and geese are essentially avian pigs, and even wild ducks will have enough fat on them to make it worth some smoke time.
I smoked a flock of ducks and geese to get to this post, so here are my thoughts on what to do, and what to avoid.
For starters, if you are using domestic ducks and geese you will want to remove as much of the fat inside the body cavity and around the neck as you can. Save it, though, and render the duck fat for cooking later.
You will want to prick the skin of a domestic duck or goose all over with a needle — be careful not to pierce the meat, though. This helps rendered fat escape. I’ve even done this on fat wild ducks such as pintail and gadwall that had been gorging themselves on rice.
If you have wild waterfowl, follow these guidelines:
- Don’t smoke sea ducks, divers or shovelers you think might be fishy. Smoking will not help you. Skin these birds and do something else with them.
- Avoid smoking snow geese or any other wild bird that is über-lean; you need some fat to make this work. Even a little is OK.
- Only smoke plucked birds. Remember, the smoky flavor lingers in skin and fat far more than meat. If you smoke a skinned duck it will be more like jerky and less like a proper smoked duck.
- Smoking whole birds give you better results than pieces. Smoking a whole goose or duck will keep the meat more tender and juicy.
- Big ducks smoke better than small ducks, although there is no reason you can’t smoke a teal.
To brine or not to brine? I’ve done both. If you want to eat the smoked duck for a Sunday dinner or whatnot, you can skip the brining — unless your duck is pretty lean, in which case the brine can help the meat stay moist. But brining a duck, especially if you use pink salt, will help preserve the bird longer in the fridge and will let you smoke it longer without drying out the meat.
So, if you choose to brine, do this:
- Mix 1/4 cup kosher salt with 4 cups water and submerge your duck in the fridge overnight.
- If you want to cold-smoke (below 90°F) or smoke for a very long time or if you want that pretty pink color, add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of pink salt, sodium nitrite, a/k/a Instacure No. 1.
- When your duck is nicely brined, take it out of the water and pat it dry. Set it in a cool, drafty place for a few hours to dry out a bit. If you want to go the extra mile, put a fan on the ducks. After it is dry, then you can smoke it. if you skip this step and put a wet duck in the smoker, the smoke will not adhere as well to the skin or meat of the bird.
If you are skipping the brine, simply pat the duck or goose dry, let it dry out for a few hours and salt it well before smoking.
As for flavors, I am in love with the combination of smoke, duck, salt and maple. And not just any maple: I prefer the thick, super-premium maple syrup from Blis, which you can buy online. If you don’t want to bother with fancy syrup, boil down regular maple syrup by half; it’s close, but not the same. I need no other flavors in my life, but honey would be good, as would a Cajun rub, something vaguely Indian, chiles, French quatre epices, etc. Use your imagination.
Wood is another choice you will need to make. I am a big fan of fruit or nut woods, like apple, pecan or walnut. Oak is OK, mesquite too weird.
How you place your duck in the smoker doesn’t really matter. I’ve stood them on end like a beer can chicken, with a glass jar jammed up its butt, and it worked well. But I’ve also just set the duck down on the rack, breast side up, and it went fine, too. You will always need a drip pan under the birds, as they will drip fat.
Your final issues are temperature and time.
If you plan on serving the smoked duck for dinner, go with a hotter temperature, between 250 to 275°F. This renders fat pretty well and gets you closer to a crispy skin. As for time, I prefer 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours at this temperature.
To crisp the skin, get your grill or oven ripping hot — 500°F or so — and put the ducks in with a drip pan underneath for a few minutes, until the skin crisps. Check after 5 minutes, and in no circumstances let the ducks or geese sit in this temperature more than 15 minutes.
If you want to have a traditional smoked duck, served cold as a luncheon meat or as an appetizer, keep the temperature closer to 200°F, and not hotter than 225°F. This will still render some fat, but will not crisp the skin — duck skin will lose its crispiness anyway once you put the cooled duck in the fridge. As for time, at least 3 hours and up to 6 hours. If you go to the long end of this scale, you will need the pink salt.
Allow the duck to cool before carving. Sliced thin and on the diagonal, smoked duck is fantastic as part of an appetizer plate or in a sandwich. You can also carve a whole breast, sear the skin side in a frying pan until it crisps again, and serve it with lentils or polenta. Again, use your imagination.
And for God’s sake save that carcass! It becomes the base of some of my all-time favorite soups, from smoked duck soup, to classic North Dakota knoephla soup, to a German duck broth with dumplings.
Smoked Duck or Goose
Ingredients
- 1 large duck or small wild goose
- Salt
- 1/4 cup thick maple syrup
Instructions
- Salt the duck well inside the cavity, then paint the outside of the bird with the maple syrup. Salt the outside well.
- Set the bird in your smoker with a drip pan underneath. Smoke between 200 and 225 degrees over apple wood for 4 hours. Baste the ducks with the maple syrup every hour. When smoked, allow to cool completely, then carve. Serve cool or at room temperature as a cold cut or appetizer, or carve the breast whole and sear in a pan. Slice and serve with lentils.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi Hank, thanks for sharing all the great recipes. I mostly hunt tye SF bay out of Mtn. View Ca.I shoot a few cans and was wondering what your thoughts were on cooking them whole or smoking them?
Thanks, jeff
Erik: Yep, double everything.
Love the site and your books. I am always making something off your website and am telling everybody about it..This maybe obvious to you but I just want to be sure.i have a question about a goose. If I wanted to smoke a goose the 4 cup brine is not going to cover the bird.. Do I just double everything in the brine, including the pink salt if I wanted a more watery brine to cover the whole goose?? So 8 cups of water 1 cup of salt and 2 teaspoons of pink salt??
Thanks
I can’t wait to shoot a plump dabbler so I can try this method on my Traeger smoker. We are seeing mostly divers and shovelers right now in the SF Bay Area, so that fishy “surf & turf” essence comes with the duck, especially the hens, who are packing on the protein. Here’s a way to mitigate that:
I breast the ducks, sometimes retaining the skin, but not usually. Then, before grilling I par boil them in a 20% vinegar solution for about 3-4 minutes. The breasts retain that deep red color to the meat, despite the boiling (that color cannot be cooked away!). But, much of the fishiness is gone, and the meaty, hint-of-liver taste I love remains.
Anne: I never smoke skinless goose, so I am not sure. But my instinct is to say yes, brine it for 2 to 6 hours.
I have several Canada goose breasts to smoke. Should I brine them before smoking? How long should I plan on smoking them? Because they have been skinned should I be concerned about them drying out? I have a Brinkmann smoker without temperature control.
Peter: Nope, but I would stick to cheap lagers or pilsners, or with malty beers. Hoppy beers might make everything too bitter.
Hank,
Have you ever used a beer brine for duck? If so, how did it turn out? If not can you speculate how it might come out? Thanks!
Richard: I use cool water.
I’m a first time smoker, looking to smoke some duck. Your recipe sounds divine! This may be a silly question, but my smoker tray has an area for the wood chips/etc. and an area for brine or other liquid additives. Any recommendations for the liquid portion? Or should I just use the leftover brine?
Hi Hank, I’ve been working on a smoke house out back for a few days now and this will be very helpful. We were given a couple of Muscovy ducklings around Christmas, and told not to kill them or the kids would be upset. Of course they turned out to be drakes, and have become quite aggressive (and randy!). Mother managed to top it off by asking why we hadn’t put them in the pot at 12 weeks! So, I decided on smoking them, which has led me to here, and here I shall stay-Great Blog, keep it up!
Steve Button, Tasmania
Hank,
Almost exactly my process. I do brine longer as I do larger batches and freeze some after smoking, but I also do a 24-48 hour (depending on the size of the birds) soak in dr. Pepper or coke. The phosphoric acid does a nice little tenderizing. Err on shorter rather than longer as the consistency gets a little like liver if you over do it. Great recipe.
Peter
Hi,
I live in South Africa, we hunt on a regular bases and will try your recipes, it looks greate!
Good site…Am bringing the 10 geese . I breased them & took the legs as well….Hope this works…Thanks for the tips.>>>>COLIN
Great article. I agree, mesquite is weird. I tend to like Red Oak from the California Coastal Mountains (think Santa Maria Tritip), but I’m going to try some of the other woods you talked about. Another wood I love is Olive.
I always place my birds breast down. That way the fat off the back moves to the breast making it juicier. I’ve done taste test and everyone unanimously preferred breast down(wild and domestic). I never have time to cut the birds, because after I put them out, they are gone in minutes.
Marty
What great recipes you do. With pheasant season coming fast Iam looking for a smoked phesant recipe. Do you think this would work for pheasant? I plan to try your pheasant sausage this year as well.
Neville: I don’t have a lot of experience with true cold smoking, but if it were me I would use Instacure No. 1 in the salting process as a safeguard against bacteria.
i would like to smoke some barbury duck brests i was looking at your method and trought i would ask for you opnion salt the breasts then cold smoke for 12 hours would this be a safe way to do this
Hank,
Love the website. I am a Navy pilot who was stationed overseas in Japan, and I used to salivate reading your blog while underway. I have used many of your techniques and recipes to serve to friends, including a huge Christmas meal in 2010 for most of our squadron, many of whom had to go out to sea the next day. That meal was a highlight for many of us during a time when 24 hour-notice deployments were a regular occurrence.
Duck is popular in Japan (think of all the starred French restaurants in Tokyo…) but less common than in China, so whenever I cooked one of your recipes for our Japanese friends, they could not get enough.
Our neighborhood park in Yamato, JP had a fantastic pond that attracted great waterfowl during the winter, usually making the trek from Hokkaido, Korea, or Siberian Russia; lesser scaup, Eurasian widgeon, pintail, redheads, etc. My wife and I used to love spending Sundays reading books by the pond and throwing old bread to the ducks.
Now that we are back in the states and have access to a smoker, and easier access to ducks to cook with, its funny that you posted something about smoked ducks. You already posted a great recipe for pheasant carnitas. As a native Iowan, I naturally gravitate towards anything pheasant. I feel you may want to try this idea, as it has worked for me time and time again:
Smoke your whole duck according the the recipe above, with the added thought that a touch of cherry or persimmon wood to any bbq is a good idea. Serve the breasts as described. Then, take the smoked wings and legs and do a decent carnitas slow cook in duck fat. Serve on heated tortillas with onion and cilantro.
Oh, and beer. I am an Iowan, and a Navy pilot. Beer must be included.
Clifton: It is salt mixed with sodium nitrite, which helps prevent botulism in sausages that are cooked very slowly. It also gives the meat a pretty pink color. In general, the cooler you smoke the meat, the more you need the pink salt. I buy it under the brand name Instacure No. 1.