Duck is a much fattier bird than turkey or chicken. One great benefit of roasting a fatty bird like duck or goose is that you can cook it at a higher temperature, so the meal is ready faster, yet there is little risk of dried out meat.
We baste our duck while it is cooking. This glazes the meat beautifully and results in the most out of this world crispy duck skin you’ve ever tasted.
There is much less meat to be had on a duck versus a turkey, but you get a ton of duck fat in return. I save this wonderfully healthy, nutritious, tasty fat in a glass container in the fridge and use it for weeks later to season roast vegetables. My children never turn down vegetables roasted in duck fat. They are simply too delicious to resist (even more tasty than veggies cooked in butter if that is possible)!
How to Make Roast Duck and Duck Broth (Video Tutorial)
Duck also happens to make the most delectable bone broth! In this video, I discuss tips for roasting a duck and making duck broth or duck stock in your own kitchen. Following the video, you will find my recipe for making duck broth as well. Enjoy!
Homemade Duck Broth Recipe
Recipe for homemade duck broth made from roasted duck that serves as a rich and nourishing base for soups, sauces, and gravy.
Ingredients
- 2 roasted ducks meat removed
- filtered water
- apple cider vinegar
- giblets optional
- chopped onion, celery, carrots optional
Instructions
Place duck carcasses in a large stockpot. Break up the bones into pieces if necessary to fit the pot.
Add cold filtered water - enough to cover.
Add a small amount of store bought or homemade apple cider vinegar. 1/4 cup works well. Stir.
Leave on the counter for 30 minutes per French culinary practice.
Place stockpot on the heat and bring to a boil. Skim off and discard any foam (off flavors and impurities) that rise to the top just before boiling is reached.
Add optional cooked giblets with juices and chopped veggies, and then turn heat down to low, cover, and let simmer for 6-24 hours.
Remove from heat, cool and strain into large 1/2 gallon mason jars or containers of choice.
Duck broth will stay good for up to 5 days refrigerated. Freeze what you will not use during that time.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
More Information on Duck and Bone Broth
Benefits of Duck Eggs: More Nutritious and Less Allergenic
5 Reasons Why Your Stock Won’t Gel
Perfect Simmer on Your Bone Broth
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
A Better Way to Drink Your Breakfast OJ (+ recipe)
Sarah,
Just wanted to let you know the video is marked private… can’t view it.
Hi Magda, I just made it public. Thanks!
Very informative video. I was thinking about cooking a duck or goose for New Year’s so I will be coming back to your blog if my family wants that for dinner.
Hi Sarah,
Your duck looks wonderful! Do you have a local source? I would have to get mine at the store. Even if it’s organic I’m not sure of the quality. Do you think it would be ok at Whole Foods? And I’m still learning about the plastic. I better go check mine.
I get mine from a local co-op.
Hi Sara, how do you find sources for your duck.
Hi Paula, contact your local WAPF Chapter Leader for his/her local sources list.
westonaprice.org/chapters
Also, do you add any salt or pepper to your stocks?
Sometimes I add some sea salt at the end but usually the stock is flavorful enough on its own.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the informative video. I have a sort of a dumb question.
I make chicken stock regularly from bones I buy from the butcher (can’t get them for free). I have seen here and elsewhere people talking about roasting a chicken and using the bones for stock, however, when I roast chicken, I serve pieces of chicken with the bones. Once the bones have been on someone’s plate (and possibly in someone’s mouth) I’m not going to use them for stock. How did you end up with the that duck skeleton? How did you serve the duck? How can I do this for chicken?
Now that I’ve seen your video, I’m going to have a look to see if I can find duck in my vicinity.
Hi Ruth, if the bones have been in someone’s mouth you can still add it to the stock as the stock will be at a low boil for hours so any bacteria would be eliminated. For the duck, we sliced it onto a plate and served it at the table that way although our kids enjoy getting an entire duck leg on their plate.
As chance would have it, my local supermarket had duck available for the first time and I got a whole one. I plan to make it on Friday, possibly with stuffing. Any advice on how best to roast it and, as someone asked below, maybe you could do a post on how you roast vegetables in duck fat.
Thanks!
Hi Ruth, keep in mind that you can’t stuff a duck with anything except fruit .. bread stuffing turns to mush from all the fat that comes off it when it is roasting.
Thanks for the advice. I actually had been planning of stuffing it with a rice based stuffing. In the end I stuffed it with mushrooms and leeks and fresh thyme. It came out great. Thanks for the help.
I adore duck and have always wanted to try cooking it myself but have been a bit intimidated! Maybe I’ll give it a shot soon!
I’ve never had duck before and now I want to try it! I’ve always heard it was very greasy but I suppose it would be to people who are used to dry chicken breasts, lol! This looks very good and thank you for sharing!
Naturally I have a noob question: What does the vinegar do?
Ciao,
Pavil
It draws out the minerals from the bones into the water.
Hi Sarah,
Regarding your comment on the foam… does it also apply to beef? I go to the market every week to get bones for my stock. I choose to go to the only organic meat store in that market. However, my bones make quite a bit of foam. Should I not trust the seller, or perhaps your comment doesn’t apply to beef?
Thanks!
A lot of foam is indicative of not the cleanest of sources. You might want to try another supplier. Store bones are never as good as what you can get direct from a farmer in my experience, organic or not.
Mara, Barbara makes a good point below. Are you making your beef stock with raw bones? If you roasted them 20 minutes each side before starting the stock you would probably reduce your foam quite a bit.
With raw beef bones, I soak them in cold water for a while, then drain them, before starting the stock. Even if you have an excellent source, residual blood in the bones can make the stock foam more, and you’ll get a better flavor if you soak the bones in cold water.
It is really best to roast the beef bones 20 minutes on each side before putting them into the stockpot (along with the drippings) At least this is what Nourishing Traditions cookbook recommends and what I have always done.
Sarah,
Yes, I do that too. I forgot! But I often soak them in cold water first, dry them off, and then roast the bones and start the stock. I figure if the water looks a little bloody, then I am glad to have done that step.
What’s wrong with blood? Isn’t blood one of those WAP super foods? In France and Spain “civets” are wild game stews to which the blood and liver of the animal are added. And all over Europe blood sausages have been eaten for millennia. Is there a reason blood is bad in stock? Sally Fallon recommends using “meaty” bones. Inevitably there is going to be blood in the stock.
I just made a batch of venison stock (wild deer harversted during hunting season here in PA) I used fresh, meaty bones and I got a good deal of scum (blood). I will try the roasting/soaking next time to see if that reduces the scum. I figure the source can’t be any more organic or natural then fresh-harvested venison! 🙂
We had goose for Christmas dinner and I just made stock from the goose on Monday. I wish I would have seen your video first though! The recipe I found for goose stock didn’t mention the vinegar. It also only said to simmer uncovered for 4-6 hours. Oh well, at least I still have homemade stock! Next time I’ll know.
I buy only the day’s bones form the only organic butcher here in Barcelona, Spain. The beef is grass-fed in the Pyrenees. Because of time, I never roast them. They foam a lot. Now, in Nourishing Traditions, under “Beef Stock” (pg. 122) , Sally Fallon explains that a “large amount of scum will come to the top, and it is important to remove this with a spoon.” Somewhere else I can’t find, Sally has explained that the scum or foam is removed because it contains proteins that give odd flavors to the stock. I have never read anything deeper on the subject than that. All recipe books instruct you to remove the scum. Where can I read more on the link between the amount of scum and the quality of the bones?
Hi Isaac, I don’t remember where I read this but I have just noticed this over the years using different quality bone sources. For example, an industrialized chicken from the grocery store will produce so much foam and smell that it is disgusting. An organic chicken from the healthfood store will produce less. My local chickens produce very little. Same with beef bones. From a grassfed source, beef bones will produce little foam in my experience whereas ones from a standard butcher will produce a lot of foam. Off flavors are in fact impurities and the more impurities, the less quality the source. If you don’t roast your bones first, I think that would contribute to the great amount of foam as well.
Very informative video, thanks.
I am going to email the local WAPF chaper leader to see if there’s any sources in the area. I’d love to try duck sometime.
Hi, Sarah! When I make chicken or turkey stock, I always pour my juices and fat that run off during the roasting process into my stock pot for extra flavor. It sounds like there would be too much fat if I did this with a duck or a goose. Do you just refrigerate your juices and fat that run off during the roasting process in order to solidify the fat so that you can skim it off the top easily, or do you have another trick to separating out your fat?
I’ve had a duck sitting in my freezer for nearly a year … I think it’s time to roast that bad boy!
Hi Candace, what we did is skim off the fat into a glass container as I showed in the video and the rest of the juices were used to make gravy. Duck gravy is incredible! So flavorful and rich.
I loved this video! I’ve been meaning to cook a duck for the longest time, and I think this has finally inspired me to actually do it. I have 2 questions:
1. Does the honey water that you use for basting affect the flavor of the rendered fat? I have to admit that the rendered duck fat is the main reason I want to cook a duck in the first place, so I don’t want to do anything that will negatively impact the taste or the ease of rendering.
2. Two gallons seems like a huge amount of stock to get from 2 duck carcasses! I usually get about 1-1.5 quarts of stock for each small roasted chicken carcass that I use. Do ducks make more stock because they are more flavorful?
Thanks!
Hi Sarah H., I did not find the honey water (2 parts water, 1 part honey) to affect the fat at all. you don’t have to use a lot .. just enough to glaze the skin and keep it from drying out. I did end up getting 2 gallons of stock from those ducks. The ducks were 4.5 lbs each which is about the same size as the local chickens I get and they each make 1 gallon of stock each unless I boil it down a bit and then it is less. It all depends on how much water you use to begin with and whether or not you choose to boil it down to a more concentrated stock to save space in the freezer.
I sure wish I could find a $3/lb source for duck.
My co-op has ducks from Mary’s Chicken for $4.50/lb.
I also usually break down the duck. Take the breasts and legs. Cook them separately. Remove the skin and fat and render (We fight over the cracklin’). Then I break the bones up for stock. I try to expose as much of the marrow as I can to get a good stock.
If you have a Northern California source for $3/lb Duck, I’d love to hear about it.
Saveur magazine had an article last month about French bistro food. It seemed like they use duck fat in everything! Their bistro french fried potatoes recipe at the end of the article called for duck fat to deep fry the potatoes. The sources in the back said you could buy duck fat by the quart – but it was like $20 a quart and you needed 2 quarts for the fries!
Making your own duck, making stock and rendering the fat seems like a super-economical way to get some fabulous food stuffs!
Hey I love your blog, its truly one of the best out there! Can u or have u done a post on how u would sautee up some veggies in duck fat? That would be great and u could tie it in with this post. Do u also save the congealed fat from chicken stock after cooling? I find myself stuck in limbo about whether to leave it in the stock or skim it for other uses.
I think another great post would be to break down the diff types of fat and their best uses in the kitchen. Lard in pie crust, tallow for french fries, etc. I made some fantastic butternut squash fries recently in the beef tallow I had left over from my beef stock.
One thing I thought to add is either an ice “bath” in the sink or simply a cold water dip for a few minutes to get your stock to a manageable temperature rather quickly. 10 minutes surrounded by ice water will cool down even a 7 ply stockpot….(my dream piece, btw!) Which reminds me, when am I going to see a Demeyere stockpot giveaway on here? 🙂 the John Pawson line would be a good start…
Especially in warmer climates where the room temps can be steady in the 80s at times, leaving the stock out for hours to cool may be a potential breeding ground for nasties to set up shop. I also find this ice bath technique useful for making yogurt and cooling the milk quickly while I wait to inoculate the batch with the yogurt starter.
Hi Trevor, I generally leave the duck fat in the stock as I get so much from cooking the bird anyway. Sometimes I do skim it off though. Depends how great a need I have for some fat reserve in the refrigerator. Great tip about the ice bath.