Xouie
Crowing
Processed a jumbo pekin duck with paraffin wax for the first time today. It worked so well! Super easy to do, and left a gorgeous bird for roasting — almost no little feathers left behind. I’ve seen some good info on BYC about duck waxing, so I’m just trying to add to the experience base. Here is what I did, learned, and learned not to do.
Points so you can skip the details below:
long details follow
After killing, plucked off the regular feathers to the down layer. I experimented with how much down to pluck, and figured out that it’s ok to pluck some of the down to thin it, but better not to over pluck. The wax makes a better layer with more down. The nearly bald part was just harder to get the wax off.
Then I cut off the wings at the tip joint and the legs at the mid joint. No need to wax what you don’t eat anyway. Left the head on (I held the head for the dunking).
I melted a pound of gulf wax in 175F water in a turkey fryer pot. This seems to be a good amount of wax for a large Pekin duck; could maybe have used a bit less. I think many of the videos that say to use more either mean for a LOT of ducks or they’re trying to get you to buy lots of expensive special wax.
Dunked the duck tail first, up and down a few times somewhat slowly like dipping a layered candle. Then ducky goes into a bath of ice cold water. Do not take it out of the cold water too soon — give the wax time to cool and harden into a nice shell. (Learn from my mistake!)
After peeling wax off my fingers because I didn’t wait long enough, I cracked the duck’s wax shell in several places and peeled off everything— wax, down and pesky little pin feathers. It left a totally naked bird. I did notice that it works a lot better if I use one hand to pull the wax and the other to hold the skin flat (if you’ve ever waxed a body part you know what I mean.)
Cleanup involves letting the wax cool and just lifting it off the water like ice off a puddle. I’ve read it’s possible to recycle and re use the wax. My plan is to remelt the wax, sieve the feathers out, and save it to try on the next duck. After that the used wax will be cleaned again and molded into fire starter bars for campfire season.
Points so you can skip the details below:
- Hot, not boiling water to melt wax
- Pluck the outer feathers, leave most of the down
- Gulf household wax ($2.56, Walmart) works great
- 1 lb of wax per bird, or less
- Let the wax COOL before peeling off
long details followAfter killing, plucked off the regular feathers to the down layer. I experimented with how much down to pluck, and figured out that it’s ok to pluck some of the down to thin it, but better not to over pluck. The wax makes a better layer with more down. The nearly bald part was just harder to get the wax off.
Then I cut off the wings at the tip joint and the legs at the mid joint. No need to wax what you don’t eat anyway. Left the head on (I held the head for the dunking).
I melted a pound of gulf wax in 175F water in a turkey fryer pot. This seems to be a good amount of wax for a large Pekin duck; could maybe have used a bit less. I think many of the videos that say to use more either mean for a LOT of ducks or they’re trying to get you to buy lots of expensive special wax.
Dunked the duck tail first, up and down a few times somewhat slowly like dipping a layered candle. Then ducky goes into a bath of ice cold water. Do not take it out of the cold water too soon — give the wax time to cool and harden into a nice shell. (Learn from my mistake!)
After peeling wax off my fingers because I didn’t wait long enough, I cracked the duck’s wax shell in several places and peeled off everything— wax, down and pesky little pin feathers. It left a totally naked bird. I did notice that it works a lot better if I use one hand to pull the wax and the other to hold the skin flat (if you’ve ever waxed a body part you know what I mean.)
Cleanup involves letting the wax cool and just lifting it off the water like ice off a puddle. I’ve read it’s possible to recycle and re use the wax. My plan is to remelt the wax, sieve the feathers out, and save it to try on the next duck. After that the used wax will be cleaned again and molded into fire starter bars for campfire season.
