Smoked duck breast is one of the most famous duck recipes the world over. With the advent of modern Electric Smoker, smoking a duck breast infused with the scent of your favorite wood smoke and eating it with your family and friends have not only become possible but also a lot easy and straightforward.
However, to smoke a duck correctly, you need to understand the meat a little better, especially the fact that it should be smoked at a temperature lower than what is required to smoke chicken, for example.
Duck breast is something that you may want to eat more frequently, but every time you do, you love it so much that you vow to eat it more often. It is undoubtedly one of the indulging types of meat. Smoking a duck breast enhances its taste to another level. And, it becomes extraordinary.
How to Smoke Duck Breast
You should brine the duck breast before cooking it in an Electric Smoker. You have to proper knowledge about how to handle this smoke gear. Experience shows that brining for a couple of hours makes the duck breast much juicier. For the brine, apple juice would work as a great base. You should mix some soy sauce, sugar, and your favorite spices in the brine.
During the smoking, you should keep the skin on even though you don’t want to eat it. The presence of skin during smoking prevents the duck breast safe from getting too dry. The result is a well-cooked, juicier and moist duck breast.
Once done, you can take the skin off if you want it that way. Or you can let the surface be and serve it as it is. Either way, you are going to love it.
For smoking duck, pecan, maple, cherry, and apple woods are all great options. If you prefer the milder woods, fruit woods can be an excellent option as they tend to have a sweeter smoke and that’s just perfect for this kind of meat. You should set the Electric Smoker at 250F and smoke it till the internal temperature drops to 150F.
In the case of chicken, pink juices indicate that it is not yet done. But that is not an issue with duck breast. The lowest recommended temperature for chicken is 165F while the same for duck breast is 150F. The duck breast is done to a medium and comes out tender and juicier. It’s incredibly great.
Smoked duck breast can be served alone, and many people find it great that way. Each bite is divine and precious. It is also beautiful sliced and mixed in pasta or inside a wrap. You can cut it into cubes and prepare a salad.
Smoked Duck Mixed Greens Salad
Ingredients:
- Boneless duck breasts: 2
- Apple juice: 2 cups
- Coarse kosher salt: 1 tbsp
- White sugar: 1 tbsp
- Soy sauce: 1 tbsp
- Paprika: 1/2 tsp
- Garlic powder: 1/2 tsp
- Dried basil: 1/2 tsp
- Ground black pepper: 1/2 tsp
Instructions:
- Mix the juice with spices, salt, and sugar
- Put the duck in a bowl and place the brine in it
- Stir the duck in the brine a couple of times
- Cover the pan with plastic wrap.
- Place it in the fridge for 4 hours to marinate
- Use Cherry, Pecan, Maple wood chips to set the smoker to 250F
- Put the meat on a smoker rack
- Smoke the duck breast for about 2- 3 hours until
- Smoke it till the internal heat of the duck breast reaches 150F
Final Words
Smoking a duck on an Electric Smoker can be a great experience besides a culinary delight.
However, to make sure that you can get a satisfying result from your effort at smoking a duck on Electric Smoker, you should have a good quality machine that has amiable features.
The second thing that you need to make sure is that the duck meat that you have should be from free range birds. Those reared in cramped farms often have too many chemicals in their system and do not give the best result when smoked with an Electric Smoker.
The recipe as mentioned above is one of the most popular ways of smoking and serving smoked ducks around the world. If the method tempts you to try your hands at smoking a duck on Electric Smoker yourself, go ahead and give it a shot!