Roast Duck two ways
Thought we would try duck two ways for Thanksgiving. One in the wood fired oven, and one using a conventional oven. In the wood-fired oven I wanted to do it vertical ( aka Beer can Chicken) , so I made a little tripod stand in place of the beer can method. This was more stable and allowed better cavity heating. and it gave me an excuse to fire up my MIG welder and cut some steel - for that extra manly man stuff :) LOL !
 |
My vertical duck/chicken holder
made out of 5mm steel rod |
I fired up the oven at about 10am and let the fire die down as I went to get a quick TG day gym workout in. At about 11:00 am, I stoked it up again, and while I was planning on putting in the bird about noon the oven was way too hot. The hardest thing about wood fired cooking is timing things, because you cannot just turn down the thermostat.
 |
| Foil wrapped |
 |
| 2.5kg duck on vertical stand seasoned and ready to go |
I waited until 1:30 to put the bird in and it was still hotter than I wanted (about 400F) so wrapped the bird in foil to shield some of the heat . At the higher temp the bird was cooked in 2 hours, but I would have preferred a longer slower cook because in comparing it with the inside oven cooked bird, the meat was not as tender. The inside oven we cooked for 3 hours at 300 and the meat was fall off the bone tender.
 |
| Wood fired accessory |
I also prepared the birds differently, so it was not really a fair comparison. They had different rubs, and the indoor one had a cherry glaze.
All and all Pretty good for ta first attempt at Duck which is a little more work than Chicken because you need to prep it better and cook it longer.
 |
| after about 1.5 hours |
 |
| Left=wood fired( al fresco) , R=indoor oven( with Cherry glaze) |
 |
| Of course there was other food too. |
