Butchering ducks - Pin Feather question

[protodon]

Today I butchered my first duck at exactly 7 weeks and 2 days. I had read that was the best time to do it because of pin feathers. Well this duck was covered in tiny pin feathers. So now I'm confused I know people say to butcher between 7 and 8 weeks but are the tiny down pin feathers unavoidable? Does anyone have some specific info about the stages of duck feather growth between 7 and 8 weeks? I still have about 20 other ducks to butcher but now I am waiting to see if this pin feather stage passes. At 7 weeks and 2 days most of the pin feathers were on the ducks front. I have no interest in skinning or using duck wax.

 

[homesteadapps]

A nice lady from Ridgeway Hatchery told us about an excellent way to remove duck feathers.


Dip them in 160 to 180 degree water for about a minute and then wrap them in a layer or two of newspaper for a few minutes.

We let them sit for about 10 to 15 minutes and the feather come out in handfuls, even the small down feathers

We were so glad find an easy way to do this.

 

[bwmichaud]

For the boneless, skin-on breast, just google pan seared duck breast and you will find a bunch of excellent recipes. They are basically all the same technique with various incarnations of fruit sauces. Take the boneless breast and score the skin with a knife forming a diamond pattern. (this helps release the fat and makes for a crispy skin) Heat a cast iron frying pan to med or medium high heat. Add a tiny bit of duck fat or olive oil. just enough to keep the skin from sticking to the pan for the 10 seconds it takes to render fat out of the breast skin. Cook the duck skin side down for a few minutes (3-5). Flip the duck over and place the pan into a preheated 400 degree oven for 5-10 minutes until the duck is rare-medium rare. Some people even prefer to keep the duck skin side down for the entire time. Whatever you do, don't cook it past medium. Now this is where I usually depart from published recipes. The published recipes will call for making and pouring a fruit/berry sauce over the duck (or serving it on the side) but I just sprinkle some dry rub on both sides of the duck before cooking instead of making the fruit sauces. Don't get me wrong, the fruit sauce recipes are good but the dry rubs are very quick and easy. It's just like cooking a steak. Cooking a breast this way only takes about 10 minutes or so.

For the duck legs and thighs, google duck confit recipes. It calls for curing the duck with salt and spices for a day or two then cooking the duck legs for hours in rendered duck fat. When I first heard of this I thought it sounded disgusting and that it would be horrible. I was sooo wrong. The thing is, you'll need 2 or 3 ducks to get enough fat rendered to cook the legs completely in duck fat. If you don't have enough duck fat, you can add oil to it to get enough. I also sometimes cut all the leg and thigh meat off the bone and use it for duck stew or duck stroganoff. Just use your favorite beef stew/stroganoff recipe and make sure you cook it a couple hours so the meat is tender. I also use the boneless leg meat for Indian recipes such as rogan josh or duck vindaloo. Basically just take whatever recipes you already like for chunks off beef or lamb and replace the meat with duck. Most people will eat it and just assume that it's beef and not even know that there is duck in there. These recipes all take a couple to many hours to make.

For the wings, I turn them into buffalo wings. Deep fry them in oil and add the sauce. Pretty straight forward.

All of the skin, except for the breast skin, is placed in a cast iron pan or pot and placed on low/med low heat until the fat is all rendered out of the skin. the skin is then pulled out and the liquid fat is poured through a coffee filter into a mason jar and then placed in the fridge. Hot duck fat flows through the filter faster than cold duck fat so if it slows down too much, place it in the microwave for a few seconds to warm it up a little. this usually only needs to be done toward the end. Make sure that when you slaughter the duck, the skin from the neck is also saved for this. This fat will turn white/yellow and can be used in place of butter or oil for pan frying. It's great to cook eggs in or for making hash browns or home fries or roasted potatoes. It is also used for the duck confit mentioned above. Some people even spread it thinly on bread.

The carcass and wing tips (and sometimes some of the skin, sliced into small pieces) are roasted in the oven with carrots, celery and onions for about 30 minutes and then the whole mess is put into the pressure cooker and cooked down til soft. (30 minutes or so) I then strain everything into a large bowl from my Kitchen Aid mixer and place the liquid into the fridge. A day or 2 later the fat all congeals on top and I scrape that off and have a nice homemade duck stock that I can use for the stew, stroganoff or other recipes. If you don't have much skin in here, there won't be much fat and you probably won't have to srape any off the top.

You of course can always roast the duck whole too. I just think that each part requires a different cooking method to reach it's optimum flavor/tenderness. Keep in mind that if you do choose to roast a whole duck, you'll want to score the skin so that the fat is rendered out so that the skin can get crispy. Most people who I have served roasted duck have felt that it was good but they have all liked the parts cooked individually much better. The duck seems to be perceived as gourmet when cooked as individual parts whereas a whole roasted duck is just another roasted bird. If people perceive the meat as gourmet, I can get more money for my ducks which means that the ducks that I keep for myself cost me little to nothing.

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

The commercial production of Pekin ducks is based on breeding and management that dictates slaughter at 42 days. Pin feathers are at a minimum at this time to facilitate the most complete removal of the feather cover. Very specialized equipment is also used to defeather. It is modified from the usual configuration used for landfowl.

 

[protodon]

Slaughtering a duck at 6 weeks sounds like a waste. I would guess that grocery store ducks are older than that.

 

[uhuh555]

Wax them to remove the pinfeathers. Melt paraffin wax and dip them in it let it harden and re-dip them a 2nd and/or 3rd time letting it harden between dipping.

Be sure to re-dip quickly so as not to re-melt the first coating of wax. The idea is achieving a thick layer of wax making it easier to peel.

When harden (totally cooled) remove it by peeling from the tail toward head and it will remove all those troublesome pinfeathers.

Save the wax you peal off, re-melt it, screen it (while hot) to remove feathers from the wax. Let it boil about 3 minutes to sterilize it so it can be used again and again.

 

[exsia]

Hi Proton,

in a nutshell... yes, those pins feathers and down are pretty much unavoidable. I butcher at all ages, and the only time I dont have any issues is when i'm butchering them at 6months! If you can't wait that long, try again in 2 1/2 - 3weeks. The pin feathers are constantly growing and there's going to be another big surge of pin feathers at week 11 1/2 - 12

I've processed them everyday from 8 weeks to 12+ weeks and i can honestly say (with 4 yrs experience) that there are too many variables to give you an exact date of when the pin feathers and down will not be present. I've had batches who clean up beautifully one day and are just crap the next

If you prefer not to skin, singeing helps get some of the down off the surface

 

[FootbridgeFarm]

It seems to me that with Pekins you just need to be flexible.

I process them at 10 weeks and after the picker is done with them I do one of 3 things:

1) If they are clean of feathers I clean and freeze them.
2) If they have a reasonable number of pin feathers I use a needle-nose to clean them up and then follow #1 above.
3) If they are just covered with down I don't bother and just breast them out at the table like a wild duck.

There's plenty of info on the Intertubes about breaking down a duck or chicken. You get most of the meat but none of that nice roast duck shape.

E

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
X2 ..duckwax is the way to go

 

[homesteadapps]

I used to use the wax but not after trying the newspapers -- never again for me. Just dip, cover and remove the feathers. It worked remarkably well.