National Dishes of the World

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Peking duck
Photo: City Foodsters, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

main dish

Peking duck

北京烤鸭 (Běijīng kǎoyā)

Roast duck with glassy, crisp skin, carved at the table and wrapped in thin pancakes with sauce and spring onion.

Eaten in: China

Prep
30 min
Cooking
1 h 40 min
Resting
12 h
Total
14 h 10 min
Servings
4

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About the dish

Peking duck is the most famous dish of China’s capital, known since imperial times. Specially raised ducks are inflated with air to separate the skin from the meat, scalded, glazed with malt syrup and dried, then roasted in an oven fired with fruitwood or in a closed oven. The skin comes out thin, glassy and crisp while the meat stays juicy. The chef carves the duck at the table into dozens of slices, which are wrapped in thin wheat pancakes with tianmianjiang – a sweet fermented wheat sauce – and strips of spring onion and cucumber. The rest of the carcass is often made into a soup.

Main ingredients

  • duck
  • malt syrup or honey
  • thin wheat pancakes
  • tianmianjiang or hoisin sauce
  • spring onions
  • cucumber

More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)

Recipe

Peking duck

https://foodmap.ominuvo.com/dish/peking-duck

Ingredients

4 servings

4 servings

Method

  1. Rub the inside of the duck with the salt and five-spice and close the cavity with a skewer.

  2. Set the duck on a rack over the sink and slowly pour the boiling water over it on all sides – the skin will tighten and turn pale.

  3. Dissolve the honey in 100 ml hot water with the vinegar and soy sauce and brush the duck several times, letting each coat dry.

  4. Refrigerate the duck uncovered for 12–24 hours until the skin is paper-dry.

  5. Roast on a rack over a tray with a little water at 180°C for 60 minutes, then at 210°C for 30–40 minutes until the skin is deep golden and crisp.

  6. Rest for 10 minutes, carve the skin and meat into thin slices and steam the pancakes to warm them.

  7. Spread a pancake with sauce, add a few slices of duck, spring onion and cucumber, roll up and eat at once.

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