CRISP AND TENDER DUCK

To serve the ideal Christmas dinner for four, our podcast host shares how to cook duck to perfection

- TOM KERRIDGE

I wouldn't be writing this article if it wasn't for duck. I cooked it on my first Great British Menu for a winning main course. (I won it again the following year, the only Chef to ever do so - just saying).

This put our little pub on the map and my face on the telly. However much I try to encourage people to use duck more, I can see why it's considered more of a thing people order in a restaurant than cook at home. A whole duck is a tricky thing to get right - the legs are best slow-cooked and the breast quick-cooked and left pink and succulent. Simply roast a duck whole and you've got to decide between very undercooked, tough leg meat or overcooked, dry breast meat, which is why I only ever roast duck the way I'm showing you here (on page 120). Yes, the butchery is a bit of extra work, but get your butcher to do it for you or buy the pieces separately. What you end up with is beautifully cooked duck with crisp skin, shreddable leg meat, and breast meat that looks like a medium-rare steak. Essentially, I'm giving you two ways to cook duck, which I often use separately, but at Christmas I bring them both together because when an ingredient has been pivotal to your career, it's the one you want to celebrate with.

Tom’s best ever roast duck If there are just two of you I would suggest still cooking the duck as described here, but serving the two elements over different days. The crown can be eaten as your Christmas Day roast and the crisp leg meat can be shredded and put ina big salad for Boxing Day.