How to make a crispy duck 'fakeaway'!

Craving your favourite crispy duck dish from the Chinese Take-away? We have some top tips for you…

Chinese 5 Spice

A quick tip is to sprinkle a generous portion of Chinese 5 Spice over the skin of duck, then cook according to pack instructions. When the meat is cooked shred and serve in wraps or pancakes with hoisin sauce.

Crispy duck legs

We tried this at home and it was delicious. The night before we wanted to eat our ‘fake-away’ we placed the following ingredients into a pan to make the aromatic liquor….

2 Gressingham duck legs
2 Star Anise
1 1/2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns
1/2 tsp Cloves
3 sticks Cinnamon
2 Spring Onions
3 tbsp Chinese Rice Wine (or dry sherry)
4 tbsp Soft brown sugar
4 tbsp Soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp Salt
1 Pint Chicken Stock
1 Large Knob of fresh ginger, sliced

We put the pan into the fridge to marinade overnight.

When it was time to cook, we put the pan with the legs and liquor on the hob to boil. Once they were boiling we turned the heat down and let them simmer for 1 hr 15 minutes. It smelt so good while it was cooking!

We then removed the legs from the liquid and placed them on a tray under the grill so the skin crisped up.

We shredded the meat and served it in wraps (we didn’t have any pancakes in the cupboard!) with strips of cucumber, spring onion and lots of Gressingham plum and hoisin sauce.