Roast Duck Breast With Red Wine Pan Sauce

Monday was my birthday and it turned out that we had 2 shows we wanted to see that fell on that weekend.  Going to the theater always requires good food beforehand, either at a nice restaurant or cooked by me.  One of the 2 dinners I prepared I was, and still am, pretty darn impressed with myself.  When I think of having a nice dinner duck is always the first thing that comes to mind because I really like it and it’s too expensive to buy very often, so for my birthday dinner before our first show I splurged and bought a duck.  I was originally considering roasting it but as the day sped by I started to panic and thought I wouldn’t have enough time to get it cooked, be able to eat, and get dressed to be downtown by 7:30.  So I swallowed my fear, put aside the intimidation, watched a couple videos on You-Tube and deboned my first duck, yup you read that right.

Once I saw a couple other people do it and found out how to get started, it really wasn’t that bad.  I saw one guy do it in 18 seconds, no lie, crazy, it took me closer to probably 10 minutes but I did it.  I was planning on taking a picture of my beautifully dismantled bird but of course forgot and remembered after I had already cleaned up.

Since I now had manageable duck parts I decided to roast just the duck breasts and save the rest for later and served with a red wine pan sauce and holy cow every bite was unbelievable, I can’t tell you how proud of myself I was with this one.

2 Duck Breasts
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Red Wine Pan Sauce

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In an oven-safe skillet, heat one turn of olive oil to medium heat.  Season the duck breast with salt and pepper then add them skin side down to sear the skin.  Duck is very oily so quite a bit of oil is going to cook out and fry the duck, but you want a little bit of oil in the pan to start with so it doesn’t stick to the pan when you first put it in. Sear for 6 minutes.  Flip the duck breast over and place the pan in the oven.  Roast the breast for 8 to 10 minutes for medium rare.  Remove the pan from the oven and let rest while making the pan sauce.  I poured out nearly all of the oil from the skillet and used this to make the sauce then spooned it over the duck. My sauce was a little bit thinner than I anticipated, I was just so excited to taste the duck I couldn't wait long enough.

This came out amazing.  The duck was cooked perfect with a crispy skin and tender inside, just barely pink and not at all tough or chewy. Big pat on back for this one.