Tea smoked duck with Asian salad
The taste of the tea smoked duck is absolutely perfect with this simple Asian salad to go along with it. Smoking is also not as difficult as you might imagine. Give it a try!
Tea smoked duck with Asian salad
It was time again for our third challenge where Peter and Mary would be giving us a ‘Masterchef Australia‘ challenge to deal with. Our first one was a lot of fun, the second challenge was more of themed one (Vietnamese) and for this challenge we got both a mystery box AND a pressure test.
Part of our pressure test was this delicious tea smoked duck. Gotta excuse me a bit for the rushed images but I had to run upstairs to shoot the duck and run back down to join the dinner again, so it was a ‘put down, shoot and go back to eat’ kind of picture. 🙂
Masterchef pressure test
The first pressure test recipe was this tea smoked duck and as luck would have it, we had smoked a duck the evening before for the first time at the cooking club, so that was a lucky coincidence and gave us a bit more confidence in making it this time.
The recipe is originally from one of the masterchef contestants named Amina. She unfortunately is out of the competition (here in the Netherlands we’re now in the finals week of that particular series..) but she had some fantastic dishes and this is one of them.
It involves quite a few steps in the preparation of the dish including infusing olive oil with tea. That takes about 45 minutes and I’ve got to say that the flavor disappointed somewhat (of the olive oil, not of the final dish!) but it could be the kind of tea or the kind of olive oil we used. It was definitely an interesting dish to make and it was soooo much better then we had thought it would be!
Ingredients
It’s funny how you can taste the separate components of a dish but then once you combine the two it all comes together. LOVED this dish. Don’t be put of by the number of ingredients used. It’s not as hard as you would maybe think. Just go step by step and you’ll be fine. Of course this would be a brilliant Christmas starter (getting into Christmas mode already!)
For our mystery box we had a pork belly which was absolutely brilliant too but I might share that later. I think I’m gonna be making that again soon, it was soooo good. The dessert was Eton Mess, so that’s a no brainer really… 🙂 All in all we had great fun and can’t wait for the next one!
The list of ingredients for this recipe is quite long. That might look alarming but don’t be scared. If you follow the instructions it really is not too complicated. Just make sure you prepare everything before so you can follow the steps more easily.
With preparing I mean slicing all the things that need slicing etcetera.
If you want you could potentially leave out the most time consuming element which is the infusing of the olive oil. Like I mentioned I didn’t think that was too interesting.
Tea smoked duck
At the end of the day, the hero of this dish is the duck. All the other elements are the extra’s. So make it easy for yourself and create an easier salad but don’t leave out the smoking of the duck. You’ll be surprised at how good it is.
Smoking the duck
Of course you can use an official smoker for making this tea smoked duck, but using a wok, like I did here, is just as simple. You line the wok with foil and on the foil you add the smoking mixture. I used a bamboo steamer to place the duck in and you do need some sort of lid to contain the smoke inside the wok.
I smoked the duck for around 6-8 minutes and then proceeded to frying the duck in a regular frying pan until the fat was nicely rendered.
Do make sure you stay close to the wok. It is on a fire so you don’t want to leave it alone until the duck is done. It won’t be cooked through. The smoking is purely to add the flavor to the dish and the cooking of the duck is in the pan afterwards.
Tea smoked duck with Chinese salad
Ingredients
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons black tea
- 2 tablespoon orange juice
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon Szechuan pepper
- 1 teaspoon salt
Tea salt
- 1 tablespoon black tea
- 1 teaspoon rock salt
Pickled radish
- 4 tablespoons brown rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 baby red radish finely sliced
Smoking mixture
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 cup black tea leaves
- 1 tablespoon Szechuan pepper toasted and ground
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 knob ginger quartered
- 3 garlic cloves halved
- 1 duck breast skin on
Chinese salad
- 1 cup woodear mushrooms halved and quickly fried in olive oil
- 1 tablespoon brown rice vinegar
- 1 small cucumber deseeded, thinly sliced on diagonal
- 1 spring onion thinly sliced on diagonal
- 1 red chilli deseeded, thinly sliced
- 1 green chilli deseeded, thinly sliced
- ½ cup coriander leaves
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- For dressing, combine the olive oil and tea in a small saucepan, place over a low heat, lightly simmer for 45 minutes, remove from heat, strain and cool. Combine the orange juice, sugar, Szechuan pepper and salt in a bowl, slowly drizzle the infused oil into the mixture whisking constantly until mixture emulsifies. Set aside.
- Combine the tea and salt on a baking tray, bake for 8-12 minutes or until crisp, transfer to a mortar and grind with a pestle to a powder consistency.
- For pickled radish, combine the vinegar, sugar and salt in a small saucepan place over a medium heat and bring to the boil, place the radish in a bowl, pour over the pickle mixture and leave to infuse for 10 minutes, then drain and set aside.
- For duck, line the bottom of a wok with foil. Combine sugar, tea, Szechuan pepper, salt, ginger and garlic in a bowl and place evenly across the bottom. Place a bamboo steamer into the wok, cover the wok with a lid, once the wok is hot and smoking, place the duck breast skin-side up in the steamer, place lid back on wok and smoke for 6-8 minutes or until smoked to your liking.
- Place the smoked duck breast skin-side down in a frying pan over medium-high heat and cook for 6-8 minutes or until skin is crispy. Turn over and cook for 1-2 minutes. Remove, rest, then slice.
- For salad, place mushrooms in a bowl, pour over the vinegar, add the pickled radish, cucumber, spring onion, chillies, and coriander leaves. Combine.
- Spoon the salad onto a serving plate, place the sliced duck around the salad and sprinkle over tea salt with the dressing in a small jug to the side to serve.
Nutrition Information per portion
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
