Stir Friday
Yes, yes, I know, I haven’t posted in more than a month. Keep your knickers on. This one was worth the wait. I eat stir fry just about every day, so I’m accustomed to the wok, but it’s usually stir fried rice, and I thought I’d do something a bit nicer for the blog. So here is our fancy-pants Rainbow Stir Fry with Duck Teriyaki. You’re welcome.
Ok, so prep is a bit of a pain in the ass, but the actual cooking bit is super easy. First things first, start with your duck breasts. And score them suckers. If you don’t score your duck, it keeps all the fat in and don’t nobody like that. First duck I ever made, I tried to baste it like a turkey. Try to baste a duck, you’re gonna have a bad time. So you’ve scored your duck breasts, like so:
Then place them skin side down in a hot pan for about six minutes. You should see the fat start to seep out. We want that, because we want the duck fat for later:
After six minutes on the skin side, flip your duck breasts and cook for another two minutes. They should be golden brown on the skin side:
After two minutes, toss them into an oven at about 200 degrees Celsius (that’s 400 Fahrenheit for you Murricans) for about six minutes. Take them out and let them sit for about fifteen minutes. Take the duck fat from the skillet and put it in a bowl and into the fridge.
Once they’ve sat for a bit, I cut them up into very thin slices. Then I cut the slices into strips. Like I said, a bit of a pain in the ass. But start to finish, that’s only about 35 minutes for the duck. Behold, the strips:
We then put the strips into a gallon-size bag and pour some Yoshida’s sauce in it. You may use the teriyaki sauce of your choice, obviously, but I special order this stuff from Murrica because it has all the feels. It is my nectar:
And the strips all mixed in:
Now I let this marinade AFTER cooking. I know there’s a bit of an internet war right now over marinating after cooking, but I urge you to give this a shot. It’s delicious. And my taste buds never lie. So I let this marinade for a few hours, and when I’m starting to feel a rumbly in my tumbly, I cut up the vegetables. You’ll probably have a lot of leftover vegetables, because you only need a little bit of each for our two-portion meal. We just need all the colors. So here we have carrots, radishes, snap peas, broccoli, red and yellow peppers, and portabella mushrooms:
Now we get our wok nice and hot, and we use that duck fat from earlier. Scrape it out of the bowl, and let it get all melty in the wok. When it’s good and hot, toss the veggies in. At the same time turn your oven back onto the same heat, strain the marinade from the duck strips, and toss them onto a tray and into your oven. Once that’s done, you can either boil some egg noodles for a couple minutes and strain and toss them into the wok, or you can buy ready-to-go noodles, but either way, there’s no photo of that prep because, dude. They’re noodles. We aren’t doing rocket surgery. So toss your noodles in, and mix the stuff around, add some seasoning, and I like to toss in a bit more teriyaki sauce:
Once everything is nice and hot and mixed together, you can plate the noodles and veggies. Take your duck strips out of the oven, and place a nice portion on top of your noodles, and garnish with some sesame seeds. Behold, ancient Japanese secret:
Sort of. I really loved this dish. The post-marinade worked really well for the duck, and my lunchtime companions agreed. And while this one takes a bit of prep, I think it’s seriously worth the effort. Stay fearless in the kitchen, my friends. Foodies never die. That is all.