Recipes using Duck Offal

[Giant Muscovy]

Hello all, this is my first post. I raise Muscovy ducks, among other things, and I have 6 big drakes I will be butchering as soon as the weather improves. I plan on making prosciutto from the breasts, confit from the legs, thighs and upper wings, an Asian stuffed preparation with the feet and pate stuffed necks(thanx to Ruhlman for this suggestion!) I am looking for other suggestions for recipes, especially with the offal. I have heard of dishes using the intestines but have been unable to find any recipes.

Thanks -jason in San Diego

Also, if anyone is interested in fresh muscovies in the San Diego area send me a message.

[FrogPrincesse]

Hi Jason,

I did a quick search in my cookbook library using EYB and came up with a few ideas:

• Duck liver ravioli (Babbo)
  
• Confit of duck gizzards, duck liver flan (Paula Wolfert - Cooking of the Southwest France)
  
• Preserved gizzards with warm lentil salad (Lucques)
  

Hopefully they can inspire you!

[DickL]

Gizzard salads (salade de gésiers) shows up often on menus in southwestern France. The gizzards are often ham-like, sliced moderately thin, and fanned out over a green salad, but I suspect there are a lot of variations. If you Google "de gesiers" (with the quotes), you should get lots of hits; when I did it, I got lots of French recipes (okay if you can read French, I guess), but there were a few hits in English and some photo sites that showed a picture of the salad pretty much as I remember it.

I also searched the files of the CompuServe "Cooks Online" forum and found a gizzard recipe that might work, fancifully entitled "Gustation de Gesier", for "savory gizzards served over toasted English muffins". (Click on "GIZZD.TXT" to bring up the recipe itself.) It's made with mushrooms and should be pretty good.

[Giant Muscovy]

Thanks for the neat ideas! I butchered two drakes yesterday. One was a gift for my Polish dentist who is country girl at heart. The other is in the fridge waiting for brine today. yesterday I made cracklings from the neck skins (very chewy) in the rendered fat mixed with olive oil. I also rolled 1 inch chunks of the livers in bacon and made rumaki which I then ate with a really spicy German mustard. This was really yummy.

Another thing I noticed is that the oild from the feathers is a great moisturizer for you hands!

[Dave Hatfield]

Spot on. You can get Salade de Gesiers at most simple restaurants in this part of France. Mostly they're chicken gizzards, but duck is even better when available.

Stuffed 'cou' (neck is also popular. Its stuffed with bits of the duck meat.

Another popular thing is 'friton'. This is the duck carcass which is fried in duck fat. You strip off & eat all the little bits.

[Giant Muscovy]

I removed all of the meat and made Tinga de Pato, cut up all of the skin and made cracklings and the carcass is in the stock pot. Everything turned out yummy!

I'll try some of the above recipes on the next batch.