How to Process a Duck. Pt4: Butchering…and bones for stock.

Butchering

 A whole roasted duck will make your house smell better than Thanksgiving and it will look amazing when it comes out of the oven. A beautiful result can be produced, but there is a cost. Have you ever had Pekin Duck at a Chinese restaurant? Is the leg meat tender? No. Is the breast meat moist and juicy? No. Roasting a duck whole does not produce the best eating experience. A duck, Muscovy, Pekin, or any other variety, including wildshot duck, is not well served by whole roasting. The breasts and the legs cook too differently; you will have to sacrifice one for the other. If you cook the bird to maximize the breast you will have legs that are tough and inedible. If you cook the bird long enough to make the legs tender the breast will be dry and overcooked. 

If you are harvesting and processing your own ducks then you should want to get the most out of your hard work. Raising ducks is not a passive activity and taking them from the backyard to the plate is no easy task. The time and labor that goes into a small backyard flock probably makes one of your duck breasts more expensive than an A5 Kobe Beef Ribeye. I don’t raise Muscovies to save money on meat. I wanted my kids to have the experience of seeing where their food comes from. We have 5 resident Muscovies that do a great job putting meat in our freezer. They have a ton of personality and are as much a part of our family as our American Bulldog. Between our ducks, chickens, the greenhouse, and the garden; our family is directly connected to the food that lands on our table. The hard work that goes into keeping ducks is worth all of the time and money. And of course, duck is one of my favorite proteins.

Butchering a whole bird is very easy. The steps that follow apply to chicken, turkey, goose, pheasant, partridge, etc. They might all be different sizes, but their anatomy is the same. If you can butcher a chicken, you can butcher a duck. 

In the Evisceration video/article you learned that I chill my birds before plucking so the Fowl Plucker can do its job most effectively. This optimizes plucking and makes evisceration less messy. A cold bird is also much easier to butcher. The skin of a duck holds a ton of fat, when that skin is cold it is firm and easy to cut through and work with. The meat is also a bit firmer. You can butcher warm birds. I have done a few single birds when my plucker was in need of a part. I plucked them by hand and then eviscerated and butchered them. When I do this everything feels sloppy. The fat is warm and makes the bird a bit greasy, and the skin is very uncooperative. Even with the sharpest knife, a warm bird will make your knife feel dull. 

Let’s jump in where the evisceration process ended. We need to remove the breasts, legs, and break down the carcass into bones for stock. 

These are the only tools you need for this project: 

10.5” Chefs knife https://amzn.to/4kFTVpI or 

 6” boning knife https://amzn.to/45DeK0r 

 3.25” serrated paring knife. https://amzn.to/4kAT9dk  

Position the bird so the legs are at your 6 o’clock and the neck is at your 12 o’clock. We are going to remove the legs first. I don’t have a preference. You can start on either side, but let’s go with the leg to your left. Feel free to move the bird around to create a more optimal angle. Whatever it takes, so you don’t leave any meat behind on the carcass that should be on the breast or leg. 

Get your hands on the bird and feel the space between the thigh and the breast, there is a natural seam. The texture of the skin actually changes from the breast to the legs. You can see this from the side. The skin covering the breast will look more bumpy and textured. This texture will end at the seam where the skin transitions to the leg. The leg skin is smoother. Between the leg and the breast there is a negative space. This is where you will open the skin to remove the leg. If you are new to this process, start with small cuts, so you can see where you are going and make adjustments as you go. Cut through the skin of the leg that attaches to the body of the bird. Make another cut along the pelvis bone. Hug the body of the bird with your knife and work your way down to the bottom of the thigh. There is a nice “oyster” of meat at the bottom of the thigh along the body where the tail was connected. Be sure to get this little chunk of meat. 

You should be able to see the meat of the leg now. Work your way forward to the armpit now that you can see where you need to go. Cut through the skin at an angle toward the armpit. The thigh meat goes very far forward. Now you can tip the bird to your right and then using your left hand, dislocate the femur from the hip socket. It will make an audible pop and you will see the “ball” end of the femur break loose from the body. Use your knife working from the armpit side of the thigh to cut the leg off the bird. Stay close to the spine. Try to take more skin than you think. You can even try to make it feel like you are taking the skin off the back of the bird. The leg is now removed and should have a generous amount of skin on it. Place this leg in a container and then repeat this process on the other leg. Place the container of legs in the refrigerator for 24 hours, so they are ice cold for the next step, which is Fine Tuning. 

Breasts:

Position the bird with the shoulders at your 6 o’clock. Use your hands to feel the breast bone. It has a ridge that goes right down the middle, between the breasts. Insert your knife through the skin of the breast at the tip (your 12 o’clock side) on the left side of the breast bone/ridge. Hug the breast bone with your knife and make an initial cut through the skin following the breast bone. It will sweep down to the left as you get closer to your 6 o’clock. Stay close to the bone and follow it all the way down to the shoulder. Consider this an outline. Go over this outline, making sure to get down to the bone. Trace over the initial cut. The tender is directly next to the ridge of the breast bone at the bottom. Use your knife to get under the tender with the whole breast. Follow the rib cage and cut the breast off of the ribs. Work your way from the tip of the breast (abdomen side) to the shoulder. Small choppy cuts are fine to make sure you don’t leave any meat on the body. Release the whole breast down to the shoulder joint. Once you get down to the shoulder joint, you will have to go around the drumette and then cut under it to get the whole breast. This meat side of the breast that is exposed will have lots of silver skin on it. Cut through the shoulder end of the breast toward the drumette to get all of the meat. You have now released the whole breast. 

Place the breast skin side down and spread the skin out. If there is lots of excess skin you can trim it a bit and reserve this skin with your fat for rendering. With the meat side up you will see some connective tissue and blood supply. Trim off the silverskin, and the little bit of fat that surrounds the blood supply in the upper middle section of the breast. Repeat this process on the other breast. Place the breasts in a container. Refrigerate for 24 hours, so they are ice cold for the next step, which is Fine Tuning. Fine Tuning is in a separate video/post.

Carcass:

You now have a duck carcass with the legs and breast removed. Our goal is to break the carcass down into bones that will fit nicely into the stock pot. Start by removing the drumettes. Use your knife to cut through the shoulder joint. It is a big joint that will be easy to find your way through. Place the drumettes in a container. There is no need to split them. 

On the back of the bird there may be some skin. You can remove any excess skin and add it to your fat for rendering. I prefer not to add fat to my stock. I would rather contribute more fat and skin to rendering. Along the back, right next to where the shoulder joints there are scapulas. Use your knife to cut under the scapula toward the shoulder joint. You will cut through some muscle and connective tissue right into the body cavity. On the scapula that you just released, you are going to use the serrated paring knife to cut through the ribcage. Start at the abdomen side of the ribcage and saw through the little rib bones toward the neck. These bones are easy to cut through. When you get through them, the front and back of the bird on this side will be free from each other. Repeat this on the other side. Now you will have two halves. There will be a breast plate and a back/spine and pelvis. Now we need to break these two big halves into smaller pieces that will fit better in the stock pot. 

Flip the breast plate over so you are looking at the inside. Use the heel of your chefs knife to split open the beast where the wishbone meets the breast plate. You don’t need to break through it, you just need to crack it. Then you can pick it up and break it in half and pull it apart. Use your chef knife to break each side of the breast plate in half. Use the heel of your knife to break through the bone. Put these 4 pieces with the other bones. 

Use your Chef knife to wack through the neck. Next slide your knife through a section of ribs. Press your knife into the vertebrae. Press hard enough to get your knife to get stuck in the spine. Use both hands to lift and then smash the blade through the spine. Free any connective tissue and put this rib section with your bones. Remove the next rib section at the pelvis. Press your knife into the spine at the bottom of the ribs. Get the knife to grab. Lift the spine with both hands and then smash your blade through to separate this rib section from the pelvis. Now you can leave the pelvis as it is. However, I usually choose to split it lengthwise, so it fits better in my stock pot. To do this you will give it a precise wack with the heel of your chef’s knife. It may take a couple of tries to get your knife through it. The pelvis is a sturdy bone structure. Put all of your bones into a container and refrigerate for up to 5 days and make stock when you have time. You can cryovac them and freeze them. You won’t be able to vacuum all of the air out, as the bones will pop the plastic. Suck out as much air as you can, but know that there will be lots of air in the bag. Since this is the case, I would only leave them frozen for a month, as freezer burn is more likely with the air that’s in the bag. 

You now have skin-on breasts and legs. The next step is to go through fine-tuning the skin to remove any remaining pin feathers and then cryovac and freeze them. Here is a link to Part 5: Fine-tuning. 

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