Duck in Duct Tape

Ingredients:
1 whole 3 lb. Peking Duck, dressed
2 T kosher salt
1 T Chinese five spice powder
2 T minced garlic
1 T minced ginger
1 cup chopped scallions
1 T light brown sugar
3 T hoisin sauce
2 T sesame oil
1/2 cup light soy sauce
1/2 cup orange juice
2 T Shao Hsing rice cooking wine
1 tsp red chile paste
Preheat oven to 300 degrees

Remove any fat pices from the duck. Rince the duck under cold water, place on a rack or cutting board and pat dry with paper towels.

To help render the ducks and make them crispy, use a sharp knife and score the skin on both breasts in a diagonal criss-cross pattern being careful only to score the skin and not cut into the flesh. Rub the duck inside and out with the salt and five spice power.

In a mixing bowl large enough to fit the duck, combine garlic, ginger, sugar, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, orange juice, rice cooking wine and chile paste.

Place duck in bowl and coat thoroughly inside and out with the mixture.

Place duck in a one gallon plastic Ziploc bag with remaining mixture. Remove as much air as possible by sealing leaving a small corner open and sucking out the remaining air and sealing completely. Wrap this in Saran or other food grade plastic wrap three times. Then wrap in two layers of aluminum foil. Lastly duct tape the entire package. Make sure that the duct tape is covering the whole thing and no tin foil is showing.

Place on a rack with a tray underneath and bake for three hours. After three hours remove from oven and rest for 15 minutes.

Turn up oven to 450 degrees.

Keeping the duck in the rack over a clean catch tray, cut open the package and let all the juices drop into the tray. Transfer the duck to a roasting pan and place in the oven to brown.

Place drippings into a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Skim off fat and simmer until thickened. Cut duck into parts, place on a platter, ladle sauce over the duck and garnish with scallions. Serve with Jasmine rice.

Duct Tape Guy footnote: When you cut the duct tape and foil off of the duck, you not only get really tastey duck, you get this really cool dinosaur shell thing (see bottom photo).

Our thanks to Joey for the great recipe and to Lisa for snapping the photos. If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, you can catch Joey on KRON tv's Bay Cafe.