top of page
Search
Lynds
Sep 19, 20205 min read

Duck, Duck... and well more Duck In Fact!

Had a bit of a challenge with my online friends and never cooked duck before ... I loved thinking about what to cook and was so excited when it came to me!!!... I give you Homemade Duck ravioli with Smoked Duck Bacon dairy free Carbonara . #homecookbattle


This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon and I earn from qualifying purchases

I have a little thing on Instagram... it's a monthly fun challenge with a predominant food of the month. It's friendly, certainly not "cut throat" but I have to say, I love how in just two simple months it's recharged the creative juices.! I may or may not be A type personality and competitive (even friendly competition) to the core! So when my friend called duck as the next food, I was like F*&#!!!!!!! now what? I had never eaten or cooked duck in my life! Challenge accepted!




Challenge number 1: figure out where to buy one... and ensure they have both legs! Sounds strange? me too... it's all about learning and apparently if you purchase a utility duck, chances are they are a one legged wonder! Thankfully mine had both!




So This seems a bit odd.... but to make duck bacon, the flavour profile is important. I decided to brine the whole duck in the mix rather than carving off just the breasts.... because why not? I used water, organic molasses, brown sugar, curing salt, kosher salt and some coffee... that's right coffee! I stuck a plate on top to hold this little guy down in his brine and put it in the fridge for about 5 hours. More would be better... it's just about how much time you have to plan. The exact amounts of each are really dependent on the dish you are using to brine the duck. basically make sure your duck is fully submerged. This would be about half and half water to coffee and 1/2 a cup of salts equal portions, 1/4-1/2 cup of brown sugar and probably 3-4 Tbsp of molasses.



After the brine, I chopped this bird up and used the breasts for duck bacon and used the legs and remainders for the ravioli filling. I'll get to the smoking of the breasts in a second but for the filling, I used a simple dusting of garlic powder, minced dried onion and salt and pepper. I placed this in a 350 degree oven and cooked for about 40-45 minutes.







I then put the breasts on my Traeger smoker on low smoke for about 3 hours. And only then raised the heat to 180 until I hit an internal temperature of 165 degrees. It was about another hour or 2... I lost track of time which in my case was fine as the point was using my meat thermometer to assess when to pull them off.





Now to make the ravioli! I basically went by hand on this, but now that I have done it, I think a few tools would have been helpful to me... My future shopping list would for sure be below to master the speed and efficiency of this labour of love!





The recipe for this ravioli is quite easy, its the patience required to do it well that is a challenge for an A typer like myself! I used 4 cups of organic white flour, and formed a little well right on my counter top. This needs to be a fairly big well with high sides of flour to work! Next I added 5 organic eggs and an additional 3 egg yolks to the mix, and 1 Tsp of pink salt. A great cheat on this is actually whisking the eggs together prior to placing inside the flour well. It is time well spent for sure.


Next you just slowly, slowly stir the eggs mixing little by little, the flour into the eggs. It's like slowly eroding the inside of the well and the bottom, but trying to keep all the egg inside at the same time. Hopefully that makes sense... here's some pictures!



Eventually as you go through this you will end up with a ball of dough, you may need to discard some of the flour, you want a dough that is not too wet or too dry... clear as mud right? But either way start kneading the dough for around 10 minutes.... you want it to be smooth and flexible, if it gets too dry spritz it with some water and if its sticks to the counter or your hands, keep adding more flour.



Once you are happy with your dough, wrap it in plastic and set aside for 30 minutes. Put it in the fridge if you don't intend to work with it right away, but remember that it needs to hit room temperature to start rolling it out to make your ravioli's.




I really had to kick it old school with these because the only tool I had was my rolling pin, but that's okay I made it work. Little by little I rolled out my dough and started to cut round circles from it. No tools? I used a glass to get the size and shape I wanted.





Remember the roasted duck legs, wings and back that I roasted? Well that was ready now too and I got to work mixing the filling.



I diced up some organic shiitake mushrooms and sage from my garden and sauted them in a pan with some high heat oil to soften them up.



From there I shredded up the duck meat and incorporated the sauteed veggies within.




To make these dairy free I used cashew cream and mixed it into the duck to make a creamy filling.


From here I started layering small spoonfuls of duck into the pasta.



and then used small dabs of water to seal another dial of pasta on to the other side. These are pretty rustic looking as I did not have fancy cutting tools, but I'll spoil the ending and tell you they tasted pretty awesome!




I boiled a pot of water to cook these up. Much like gnocchi these will float to the surface when the pasta is cooked. If your dough or filling is quite thick I would probably leave boiling for about 1 minute after they float.




From here, I went back to my duck bacon and started to thin slice it up for the purpose of frying in a frying pan just like bacon! I also sliced up some more shiitake mushrooms for the carbonara.











I fried these up while at the same time I had pans going to both brown the ravioli's and crisp up some fried sage.



Once all the ravioli's were crisped up I started on the carbonara sauce. To make this dairy free I found a great Parmesan substitute that blended and melted well.



The sauce consisted of:


1/2 a cup of dairy free parmesan

1 whole egg and 3 egg yolks whipped together.

A splash of dairy free milk, blend well!


While my ravioli's were still hot, I took them off direct heat and poured in the carbonara sauce tossing constantly to coat them in the mix. I also added in the sauteed mushrooms and smaller diced duck bacon at this point.




I plated out the ravioli's and then worked to top with the duck bacon and the fried sage for taste and presentation. I thought this looked really pretty and it also had very rich and dynamic flavours throughout! Not going to lie this took a while, but it was a fun process I would venture to do again in the future! I hope you try it!










0 comments

Comments

bottom of page