Butchering ducks - Pin Feather question

[bwmichaud]

Pin feathers suck. I've had pretty good luck just plucking them in the plucker but this past week I slaughtered 2 and the plucker only got about 70 percent of the feathers off. There were plenty of little pin feathers left. I used to wax ducks but the wax is a major pain in the butt and it's pretty expensive. I hear of a lot of people who have success with regular paraffin wax but if you buy the actual duck wax, you'll find it to be less brittle and more "peelable". It's also more expensive. Waxed ducks are absolutely perfect looking though and if that's what you are going for, by all means, wax them.

 

[rbefarm]

Hi all..I'm new here and found this thread on a google search. Cool forum..I hope to hang out a bit on here. I'm a pastured poultry producer in SE Virginia and it looks like a great site.

Anyway, I tried to slaughter my first ducks today (Pekins just under 10 weeks old). OMG but the pinfeathers were extremely bad. We have a scalder that was set to 160 F...as hot as it gets...and a drum plucker. We do a lot of chickens... Anyway, it did not go well. We did three and quit. I wanted to research how to do this better and found this discussion. I'm very very curious how this waxing works. Do you scald and defeather the duck first with a normal plucker, and then wax what is left or just pass the scald completely and wax and pluck by hand? I wondered those of you who wax..do you do it with the head on, dewinged, etc... I did a google search and came up with all sorts of information..much of it conflicting so I thought I'd just post to you all and ask.

Thanks!

 

[bwmichaud]

I usually scald my ducks at a higher temp than 160. I find 170 works better for the drum plucker. It still doesn't get the pin feathers out very well. When waxing, I would add the wax to the scald water until there was a thick layer of wax on top of the water. I submerged the duck through the floating wax into the water for maybe a minute and then pulled it out slowly and let it cool until the wax hardened. I then dipped it very quickly into the wax so that the layer got built up instead of just melting off the 1st layer. After a few layers, I let the duck cool for a while until the wax was hardened enough to work with. Then you just peel off the wax and the feathers, down and pin feathers come with it. Next time, I'll have a separate pot with just water in it to scald the bird 1st and then pull out the large flight feathers and tail feathers. After pulling the large feathers, I'll use the wax for the smaller feathers, down and pin feathers. I'll also probably try to pour the melted wax directly onto the duck instead of adding it to the scald water to see how that works but I have a local guy that has tried it and he tells me that it won't work that way. (We'll See) Be careful not to try to peel off too much at once or the skin may tear.

The cleanup seems to be the worst part. You end up with a mess of wax melted in dirty scald water that needs to be separated. While some people strain it out through a mesh bag or cheesecloth and reuse it, you may find, like I did, that the wax still has minute particles of the nasty scald water and blood and duck fat mixed in. If you plan on keeping this used wax refrigerated and reusing it fairly soon, it's probably not a problem to reuse it. If you leave it at room temperature for a while, it will smell like something died. Maybe there is a better way to strain it but the mesh bag just doesn't get you the same virgin wax that you started with. After straining it all out, you still need to get the remaining bits of wax out of your scald pot. I heat it up a couple times with clean water and dump it and wipe it with a paper towel and after a couple tries, most of the wax is gone. While it's worthwhile for a buch of ducks being processed at once, it's pretty time consuming cleaning everything for only a few ducks. The ducks sure do look nice after being waxed but it really is a lot of work.

I'm not sure how you package your ducks but I vacuum seal the boneless skin-on breasts and then cut the meat from the legs and thighs and vacuum seal that separately. I take all of the skin and cut it into small pieces and render the fat out and strain it through a coffee filter into mason jars. I then take the skinless carcass, leg bones and giblets and make duck stock. Doing it this way, I only have to detail pluck the breast so I just scald in 170 water and throw them in the plucker. It does get most of the feathers off and the detailing of the breast doesn't take that long. Yeah, some small feathers are still in the skin when I render the fat but it doesn't seem to change the flavor. If you're selling whole ducks, I guess they need to look nice and it would require detail plucking the whole bird.

 

[rbefarm]

Thanks bwmichaud for the info. We are hoping to do whole duck roasters. That was the plan. All but one of the three I did yesterday ended up skinned and I kept the breasts and thighs only. One I managed to get 99% of the pinfeathers out and we'll keep it for our own use.

I guess I'll give the wax a try and see how it goes. We are going to wait two weeks also and see if that helps. They'll be closer to 12 weeks old then. We have about 29 left to do so it is a significant number!

Thanks again!

Quick question...are Muscovy's as bad as Pekins for pinfeathers? I am intrigued with Muscovy's and thinking of giving them a try. I've had several requests at the market for them also.

 

[kuntrygirl]

How long does it take to process a muscovy duck? I have about 30 - 50 males to process and I was just wondering. How many days do you think it will take to process that many?

 

[bwmichaud]

From my experience, Muscovy ducks have fewer pinfeathers but I'm sure this is because I've always slaughtered them at an older age than other breeds. I have also found that every time that I think I have figured out the perfect time to slaughter to avoid pinfeathers, I am proven wrong. I have raised Pekin, Cayuga and Muscovy ducks and I prefer the Muscovy. They cayugas are fine for personal consumption but almost impossible to sell due to the difficulty of removing every single trace of black feathers. For some reason, the black and brown Muscovy ducks seems to clean up better than the Cayugas. I think the Muscovy taste better and they are more self sufficient. The drakes also get huge, yielding 2 boneless breast portions of almost a pound each. While I sell both Pekins and Muscovy for the same price, I think that I could probably charge more for the Muscovy since there doesn't seem to be any for sale near here without ordering online. The people who have bought both from me usually come back and buy the Muscovy but will settle for a Pekin if that's all that I have at the time.

If you plan to keep them for 2 more weeks, keep in mind that now that they are pretty much grown, they will be eating quite a bit of food which will either cut into your profit or require you to up your prices.

I can sell whole chickens for around $3.50 a pound and whole ducks will only fetch about $5.00 a pound. When people pay $5.00 a pound for a duck, roast it and only get 1/2 the meat that they would have gotten from a comparably sized chicken, they feel like the've been gypped. (I don't mean to offend any Gypsies) If I part the ducks out, I can get $15 a pound for skin-on boneless breast, $8 a pound for bone-in leg quarters and $10 a pound for boneless leg/thigh meat. A carcass with neck and giblets without skin is $2.00 and a 1 cup mason jar of rendered fat is $6. I also sell 1 pint mason jars of rendered fat with 6 leg quarters for $40 for duck confit. Now I don't exactly have people knocking my doors down to buy the ducks but the people who do buy them keep coming back. I've found that most Americans have a belief that a duck should be cooked like a chicken and when they try roasting one, they end up with a greasy mess and tell everyone how greasy duck is which doesn't help my sales. By selling the parts and providing cooking advice for each part, my customers have had great success and they feel like they are making gourmet food that wows their friends and family. This is what keeps them coming back and paying what seems to some like a high price for duck. I also try to beat it into their heads that duck is more like filet mignon than it is like chicken and those who have tried my pan-seared duck breast seem to agree. Filet mignon in the store is about $18.00 a pound and boneless chicken breast in the store is about $1.99 a pound on sale. Lastly, I let them know that duck breast is best when cooked to medium rare or less and ask how they prefer their steak. If they like their steak well done, I recommend they buy a chicken because a duck breast cooked that much will be a waste of their money.

kuntrygirl, There are a lot of variables there. I feel that about 15 minutes is what it takes us (2 people) to catch, slaughter, eviscerate, pluck in a drum plucker and hand pluck the vast majority of the remaining feathers. Once they are inside, it probably takes another 15 minutes to cut up, detail pluck and wrap each bird so they look presentable for sale. (This doesn't include the time to render the fat down) Without an automated plucker, I feel that it's closer to an hour per bird total.

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
I would love to hear what you have to say for the rest of the cooking advice.. I've never eaten duck.. so I am one of those poor fools who would end up cooking it like a chicken!
We will be butchering duck later this year and it will be a regular thing from here on out (muscovys will probably end up being our main meat bird once we have a good supply going for our own use).. so any advice you have that you would be willing to share would be greatly appreciated

I've processed and butchered ducks before.. just never cooked one or eaten it (always gave them away to friends)

 

[happydog]

Quote:
Same here. My Anconas are 4 months old and I will need to butcher the excess drakes. I thought you would cook duck just like a chicken. Would really love to hear anything about cooking duck.

 

[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.

 

[happydog]

Wow, thanks so much for the helpful how-to!

It sounds like the breasts are the best part as well as the easiest to prepare. I can't think of too many occasions when making confit for hours sounds like fun, lol. The thing that really surprises me is that, unlike poultry, you don't have to be sure to cook it thoroughly. You don't have to worry about trichinosis (or whatever it is) like with chicken? How do you know when it's done? Is it red like a steak or does it look like chicken with red juices?

Have you ever canned your duck meat? Canning it should make it nice and tender, plus it would be a lot more convenient to just grab a jar and make a meal. I'm thinking I'll freeze the breasts for pan searing, and then run the rest of the carcass through a steam juicer to get all the juices/fat out, and then pick the meat off and can it. So it tastes (or chews) more like beef than chicken? That's great because it'll be really versatile.

I'm really looking forward to the fat. I've heard potatoes fried in duck fat is awesome. Thanks for giving us the details.