Duck for Dinner

Want to clear some freezer space and use up some of the birds you shot or need an excuse to head back to the duck blind? Try this simple roasted duck recipe over the holiday season!

The average wild duck will be much smaller — often half the size — than a store-bought duck. Wild duck is also usually more flavorful and leaner, allowing the bird to cook up relatively quickly.

But even among wild ducks, size and flavor can vary greatly. Diving ducks feed on a lot of fish and other aquatic organisms, so they can have an oily, fishy flavor. Puddlers, on the other hand, eat a more vegetarian diet and offer a more pleasant taste to most hunters.

So if you have some mallards, wigeons, teal, pintails, or other puddle ducks on hand, now is the perfect time to start a new dinner tradition.

This recipe can easily be doubled, tripled, etc. to serve a holiday crowd if you limit on puddlers.

Ingredients

1 wild duck, gutted, plucked, and cleaned

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon dried rosemary

2 tablespoon honey

5 garlic cloves

½ small yellow onion, quartered

1 Granny Smith apple, quartered

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Bring duck to room temperature, then carefully score the skin with a knife in a diamond pattern.
3. Place the garlic, onion, and apple inside the cavity of the duck, then tie the legs together using twine to keep it secure.
4. In a bowl, mix salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and rosemary. Rub the mixture evenly across the top of the duck.
5. Put the seasoned duck on the rack inside a roasting pan.
6. Roast in preheated oven for 8 minutes, then decrease the temperature to 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove the duck from the oven and brush with the honey. Return to oven for another 10 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 140 degrees.