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Chinese Name: 北京烤鸭
English Name: Roast Beijing Duck; Peking Duck; Peking Roast Duck
Category: Lu Cuisine鲁菜
Main Ingredients: Duck
Peking Duck北京烤鸭 is a world-famous Beijing dish that originated in the Southern and Northern Dynasties of China. It is made of high-quality meat duck and roasted over a charcoal fire. It is ruddy in color, fat but not greasy, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
In the Early Years of the Ming Dynasty明朝, the people loved Nanjing salted duck, and so did the emperor. It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang朱元璋, emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty明太祖, ate a Roast Duck every day.
There are many Roast Duck restaurants in Beijing, and the most glorious of these restaurants is Quanjude全聚德, which has made Pecking Duck a symbol of Beijing cuisine. Quanjude’s founder, Yang Quanren杨全仁, started out as a chicken and duck trader. After accumulating money, he opened Quanjude Pecking Duck Restaurant and hired a Pecking Duck chef who had served in the palace.
Nowadays, Hanging Roast Duck挂炉烤鸭 and Braised Roast Duck焖炉烤鸭 are two major styles of Roast Duck in Beijing. Many Roast Duck restaurants have also adapted the two traditional styles to suit modern tastes and consumer habits. In recent years, the use of braised oven roast duck restaurants is very few, most of the roast duck restaurants are hung oven baking methods. In many places, the scallions have been replaced with strips of cucumber, which are all good improvements.
The usual way to eat Peking Duck is to scoop up a little sweet bean sauce甜面酱 with a spoon, spread it on the cake, then put a few pieces of duck on top of it, and finally put a few slices of green onion, cucumber, or radish, and roll up the lotus leaf pancake. It’s really delicious. Others like to dip slices of cucumber, green onion or radish into the sweet sauce甜面酱, then place the sliced duck on top of the cake and roll it up.
How to make Peking Duck?
The raw material used for Beijing roast duck is stuffed duck. The duck is fat, and every day the skilled workers will adjust the feed with naked oats flour and other nutrients in a round into the stomach of the duck. The duck will hardly eat by itself. There are strict rules about how long ducks can grow, with one saying that only 45-day-old ducks are allowed to grow.
As tastes change, fatty duck meat is no longer popular, and restaurants have switched to lean duck. After the duck is cleaned, water is poured into the stomach and the cloaca is sealed with an iron needle. When roasted, the duck body is intact and the cooling effect of the water in the belly makes the meat tender and smooth.
Ingredients：
- A duck
- A cucumber
- A green onion
- Some soy sauce酱油
- Some salt
- A moderate amount of cooking wine料酒
- Some honey
- Some sweet bean sauce甜面酱
Instruction:
- Step 1, Wash the duck.
- Step 2, Hang or stand the duck.
- Step 3, Boil a pot of boiling water and slowly pour it over the duck’s body to shrink the skin so it doesn’t bleed oil when it dries.
- Step 4, Mix the soy sauce酱油, cooking wine料酒 and salt, smear them evenly on the duck and leave for about an hour.
- Step 5, Dilute the honey with water and spread evenly over the duck. This step is to make sure the skin is crispy. Apply it as many times as possible, or again in half an hour.
- Step 6, Leave the marinated ducks in a cool place to dry overnight or for 5-6 hours.
- Step 7, Once the skin is completely dry, the duck can be removed and roasted, and the drier the skin, the more crispy it will be. You can even use a hair dryer to dry all the wet parts.
- Step 8, Turn the oven to 350F(180C) and bake for about 40 minutes, until the duck is brownish red and shiny. Take it out at a low temperature so that the inside is cooked and the skin doesn’t burn.
- Step 9, Look at the duck, if both sides are cooked, you can take it out and cut it into slices, and be careful not to cut it when slicing.
- Step 10, Add some salt to the flour and blanch it with boiling water, then add the right amount of warm water and stir well, and when it is cold, knead it into a dough.
- Step 11, Wake the dough for an hour, then pull it into a dough twice the size of your thumb and roll out the dough into a pancake.
- Step 12, Put a piece of gauze or tin foil in the steamer basket, then fold the dough and put it in for 3-4 minutes.
- Step 13, Shred the shallots, cut the cucumbers into strips, and pour the sweet noodle sauce on a plate. Then roll up the shallots, cucumber strips, and duck with a pancake with sweet noodle sauce and enjoy it.
