Peking Duck

Beijing's lacquered duck, air-dried and hung-roasted until the skin shatters, carved at the table and folded into thin wheat pancakes with spring onion

Origin: Beijing & the North China Plain

From the journey of Wheat.

Everything about Peking duck is arranged around the skin, and almost none of the work is cooking. Air is pumped between the skin and the flesh to separate them; the bird is scalded with boiling water so the skin tightens; it is painted with a maltose syrup and hung in a cold draught for a day or more until the surface is dry as parchment. Only then does it go into the oven, hung rather than laid down, so that heat reaches every surface and the rendered fat falls away instead of pooling. The result is a skin that shatters and a layer of fat that has almost entirely gone. The wheat is the other half of the dish and the reason this entry hangs on it. Peking duck is not served as a roast: it is carved into slices of skin and meat and eaten folded into bobing, thin steamed pancakes rolled out in pairs with oil between so they can be peeled apart after cooking, with batons of spring onion, cucumber, and a smear of sweet fermented bean sauce. Without the pancake there is no dish, only a duck. The pancake is not an accompaniment set beside the plate but the vessel the food is assembled in. The lineage is documented further back than most. Roast duck appears in Chinese sources from the Yuan period, the imperial kitchens of the Ming took it north to Beijing when the capital moved in 1421, and the two surviving schools divide on the oven. Menlu, the closed oven, cooks by residual heat from a fire drawn out before the bird goes in and is the older method, kept by Bianyifang since 1416. Guolu, the open hung oven fired with fruitwood, is the method Quanjude adopted in 1864 and is what most people now picture. A good restaurant carves at the table and counts: a hundred and twenty slices or thereabouts from one bird, each with skin attached. The carcass goes back to the kitchen and returns as a soup, because nothing is wasted, and that final bowl is part of the meal rather than an afterthought.

Ingredients

Duck

  • 1 whole duck, about 2.2kg, head on if possible
  • 2 litres boiling water

Glaze

  • 3 tbsp maltose syrup, or honey
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 200 ml boiling water, for the glaze
  • 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine

Pancakes

  • 300 g plain flour
  • 180 ml boiling water
  • 2 tbsp sesame oil, for brushing between the pancakes

To serve

  • 6 spring onions, cut into 6cm batons and shredded
  • 1 cucumber, cut into 6cm batons
  • 6 tbsp tianmianjiang (sweet fermented bean sauce), or hoisin

Method

  1. Rinse the duck and dry it. Loosen the skin from the breast and thighs by working a straw or the nozzle of a pump under it and inflating gently, or by easing it apart with your fingers and the handle of a spoon.
  2. Separating skin from flesh is what allows the fat between them to render away. Without it the skin steams from underneath and stays soft.
  3. Hang the duck over the sink and pour the two litres of boiling water slowly over it, turning, until the skin tightens visibly and turns opaque.
  4. Mix the maltose, vinegar, wine, and 200ml boiling water into a thin glaze and brush the whole bird with it, twice, letting it dry between coats.
  5. Hang the duck in front of a fan in a cold place, or uncovered on a rack in the refrigerator, for at least twenty-four hours.
  6. The skin must be completely dry to the touch and slightly translucent before roasting. This is the step people cut short and it is the one that matters most.
  7. Make the pancakes: pour the boiling water into the flour, stirring with chopsticks, then knead to a smooth dough and rest it thirty minutes.
  8. Roll the dough into a rope, cut it into 16 pieces, flatten two at a time, brush one face with sesame oil, stack them oiled faces together, and roll the pair out to about 16cm.
  9. Dry-fry each pair for about forty seconds a side until they blister faintly, then peel the two apart whilst hot. Keep them wrapped in a cloth.
  10. Roast the duck at 200°C for thirty minutes, hung if you can rig it or breast up on a rack over a tray of water, then turn it and give it thirty minutes more.
  11. Raise the heat to 230°C for a final ten to fifteen minutes to blister and darken the skin. Watch it, since the sugar in the glaze burns quickly.
  12. Rest for ten minutes, then carve into thin slices with skin on every piece, and serve with the warm pancakes, spring onion, cucumber, and sauce for everyone to fold their own.

Notes

The drying is the recipe. Twenty-four hours uncovered in a refrigerator is the practical domestic version of hanging a duck in a Beijing courtyard, and skipping it gives roast duck rather than Peking duck. Maltose is sold by Chinese grocers and gives a better lacquer than honey, which burns sooner. Roll the pancakes in oiled pairs; it is the only sensible way to get them thin enough by hand, and they separate cleanly after cooking. Keep the tray of water under the bird to stop the falling fat smoking. Do not stuff the cavity or baste it: this is a dry-surface technique throughout.

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