Roasting

IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH to get hold of a wild duck, or if you’re in Europe, where ducks are leaner, you can simply roast your duck at 500°F for 25 minutes (450°F for 35 minutes for a domestic wild duck) and it will end up with crispy skin and pink, medium-rare meat. If you cook an American domestic duck this way, you’ll end up with raw flesh covered with a layer of flabby fat. American ducks must be cooked slowly, for a long time, so the fat contained in the skin has time to render. This, of course, means that you won’t be able to have duck roasted to a pink medium rare but will have to settle for flesh that’s cooked all the way through to well done. The payoff is that the skin will be crispy and, despite the long cooking time, the flesh will be moist because it’s been well protected by the fatty skin. Because slow-roasting duck bastes itself as it cooks in its own fat, the result is much more like confit—meltingly tender flesh with crispy skin—than it is like, say, roast chicken.