RUBS & SEASONINGS
I Smoked a Duck Like A Brisket....Edible?
by Eat More Vegans - Carnivore BBQ
Yes, you read that right! Could this be the newest way to grill a duck or is this a felony? Doing the dirty work for us is Al from Eat More Vegans. Find out the results down below.
I'm gonna smoke a duck like a brisket. Don't cry foul until you've tried it. Actually, I have no idea if this is a good idea or not. I mean it's probably gonna be a complete disaster, but if it works, maybe they'll invite me to be a guest on Duck Dynasty or something, right? Let's jump right in.
All right, so this duck is gonna get cooked differently than I usually cook duck. I'm gonna make this one like a brisket.
The first step, I want to flatten this thing out. I'm gonna remove the backbone and do what's called spatchcocking. I'm just going to cut right up along the side of the spine, and then, I'm going to come around and do the same thing along the other side of the spine so that I can pull it out…
I'm going to save this for making stock, and then, we want it to lay flat. So to lay it flat, we're going to cut right here at the top of the breastbone, and then, that will break.
You see how that lays flat? So now we got a lot of stuff that's just hanging off of here that we know isn't going to cook real well, like these wings. So I'm going to go ahead and take these wings off. They will do a better job in a stock pot for me.
And there's a lot of extra skin and fat just hanging off of here. I don't know whether this would be a good idea or a bad idea cooking it like a brisket, but I don't think it's gonna help us. I'm just gonna take the parts off that aren't over meat.
Okay, so we've got our duck nice and trimmed up. It's laying nice and flat shaped, kind of like a brisket, like the point coming over the flat. I think this is gonna work, so let's go ahead and put our brisket rub together.
I've got just Morton's Kosher salt here, and I'm going to go for a 50 50 mixture of salt and pepper. Now, I'm using this new pepper cannon that I've got. I love this thing. It's going to create cracked black pepper at just such a velocity. I would never use a pepper grinder for this, but look how quickly this works. So you can see how much thicker this pepper is, so I'm just going to mix this so I've got about a 50 50 salt and pepper.
I'm just using water as my binder. I'm just going to get this nice and wet so that the salt and pepper will stick to it. And we're gonna start on the underside and just get a good seasoning on here.
I'm not gonna go too heavy. I don't know how this duck is gonna handle the seasoning like a big beef brisket would. Just get a good coating, and then, I'll flip it over.
And the reason I'm doing that side first and this side second is because this is going to be our presentation layer. So we always want this to look as good as possible.
Now, normally, when I'm cooking a duck, I'm using a lot more flavor than this, but this is a brisket… or a briscuk… or a dusket… Let's go with dusket. Well, you guys tell me in the [YouTube] comments what you think we should call this. So we're going to season this just like a Texas brisket.
All right, I'm going to put this back in the refrigerator. Let that salt absorb a little bit, and let's get the grill fired up. I'll meet you at the grill.
“Say hello to my little friend!” All right so Darth is running at 250 degrees almost exactly. He's being controlled by that ThermoWorks Signals and Billows combination. You've been here before, you know that that's my favorite way of controlling the grill.
I'm gonna bunch this up just like I would a brisket, and then, I'm gonna put a temperature probe right into the breast of the duck just so I can keep track on my phone of the temperature and what's going on with our cook.
And now we're gonna let this smoke at 250 for well… heck, I have no idea how long this is gonna take, but we're gonna take it like a brisket.
You guys Jurassic Park fans? You know Jeff Goldblum had a line in that movie, “Your scientists were so focused on whether they could, that they never stopped to ask if they should.” I feel like that's our situation here. We're gonna see whether we ruin a duck or whether this turns out amazing. I'll be back in about an hour to spritz and check on progress.
Okay, so it's been an hour and we're already at 147 degrees according to the ThermoWorks. Let's take a look here. You know it looks good. I mean our skin is drying out a little bit. I don't know if it's a bark forming. Does a bark form on duck skin?
So let's just double check in the other breasts and make sure that we're getting a good reading here. Yeah, right there 147-148 so this is an accurate reading.
I think spatchcocking probably helped us to get a good cook time. We're not gonna be on here this long. This is gonna be maybe a two or three hour cook, so I probably don't need to do this because I've got the water pan, but we spritz a brisket so I'm gonna spritz the duck. And at this point, I think I'm probably going to let it go, and I'll come back when it's around 200 degrees. So I have no idea how long that's gonna take, but I'll see you then.
Okay, change of plans, so I told you I thought it was going to be done in two hours, but this duck is acting like a brisket. So look at the thermometer here. It's been stuck at this 170-172 degrees point now for about a half an hour, and we're at the two hour mark, which means the duck is stalling like a brisket would stall.
I mean that's a really good sign that this cook might turn out the way we want it to turn out, but it could also mean that stall is going to squeeze any remaining moisture out and this thing is going to be dry AF. So let's take a look at what it looks like now.
Well it's shrinking and you can see a lot of fat has dripped off in here, and there's some moisture on the surface. So I think that is exactly what's happening here. I think that the duck is in a stall just like a brisket would be in a stall, so I don't know how long this is going to take. A brisket could take an hour. It could take four or five hours to come out of the stall. We'll see what happens with this duck, but maybe this isn't going to be a two or three hour cook. The mystery continues.
We're at three and a half hours now, and the duck did actually stall. It stayed there for over an hour, but it's rolling again now. So I feel safe opening it up and seeing how it looks…
All right, we have lost a lot of fat. You can see all of the duck fat down there, but look at this. We actually have a little bark. The skin is crisping up. The duck has shrunk quite a bit. Hopefully, it's just the fat, and we haven't lost too much moisture. It's a lot on top here.
We're at about 181 degrees now. I'm gonna guess if this was a brisket it would take about another hour or so, maybe four and a half hours. We'll be done an hour from now. Well either way I'll be back and check in.
We're at five hours now. Boy, this duck is wasting away to nothing. Our temp is up to 188. I cranked the grill temperature up to 275 just like I would do with a brisket. I got to tell you this is getting tough like a brisket gets tough right before it's done.
I mean, I don't know if this is going to release like a brisket or stay tough, but I mean, maybe this is a good sign. All right, I'm going to give it a little bit of a spritz because it's drying out. Guys, I don't know what's going to happen here, but I'm more optimistic than I was when I started. I'll be back when it finally gets over 200 degrees, and we'll see whether the meat releases and it becomes tender and probes tender or whether we're gonna have a tough bird.
Okay, we're over 195. We're at 196 and change, which is where we'd start checking a brisket, so let's start checking our duck.
All right, it looks nice and dark. I'm a little worried it might be dried out, but I'm not sure. I mean, when I press it, I get a little bit of fat comes out, so maybe it's okay or let's see if it's probing tender yet. It is! It was tough before and it's tender now.
I think I'm gonna take this as a sign. I think it's time to pull this little tiny duck that used to be a giant duck and give it about 15 or 20 minutes of rest. I don't think it needs to rest for hours like a brisket. Then, we'll carve it up and see how this turned out...
So you guys ready to see how this thing turned out?
All right, so I got a piece of skin that I pulled off. It's actually more crispy than I would have expected cooking at a low temperature. Let me try the skin first.
It's got a lot of flavor. I can tell it tastes like duck, but it's definitely got that salt and pepper brisket thing. Now, let's take a piece of the breast. This is… this is not looking juicy. There's nothing running out of it when I squeeze, so let's see.
This is overcooked duck, and it's really, really dry. It's almost astringent.
It's sucking the saliva out of my mouth, but I got an idea for how I can save it. Hang on just a second. We got a way to make this juicy.
[Grab your own pair of Grillaholics Grill Gloves to handle your hot surfaces.]
Remember all that duck juice? That wonderful liquid gold duck fat that we captured. Let's see if a little duck fat solves that problem.
Definitely heated it up. Holy cow! The duck fat really worked! It's juicy now and tender. The duck fat saved it like I'm gonna call this a success. Somebody call Duck Dynasty and tell them it's time to put me on the show because I made a duck like a brisket and nobody's ever done that before...
