How To Make Easy Peking Duck Pancakes...my go-to Chinese duck recipe _ #AtHome _ Marion's Kitchen

Glazed sticky skin , perfectly cooked duck and all bundled up in a homemade Chinese pancake .

We're making Peking Duck , my friends , but we're doing my cheats version .

If you have a listen to this , hm .

The box is in the bag .

But if you have a listen to this , I mean , for a cheats version that's pretty good in my book , Peking Duck .

Ok .

So if you've got four days up your sleeve to make your Peking duck , that's great .

You should go ahead and make the traditional version of Peking duck .

But I would like to have Peking duck without all the larva , please .

And could I do it quicker ?

Well , that was a question I asked myself and here we go guys , this is my very special cheats version that I've been working on .

So I've been very excited to show you guys .

Um We're gonna start off with the pancake mix first of all .

So I decided to keep the pancake in because , you know , I think it's a really easy process and it doesn't take that long , unlike the traditional Peking duck , which takes a long time .

Um So I'm gonna start off here with some low protein flour .

And you might ask why the low protein flour .

Well , I wanted the dough to be really soft and pliable .

So if you can , please try and find a low protein or cake flour , that's what you're looking for .

Now , just make a little , well , in here , by the way , you could use just all purpose flour as well if you can't find a low protein flour .

Now , uh some boiling water or just boiled water into the middle there and some vegetable oil and then give that a mix .

Now , once that starts to come together , then just grab a little bit of flour , put that on your bench top and then take your dough out and then just give this a need .

It comes together really quickly , you know , just a few minutes here and once your dough is really lovely and smooth , that's when you know it's ready .

OK ?

Just pop that into a clean bowl and then you just wanna cover that , let it sit around about 20 minutes or so .

And then it's good to go .

Now let's get on to doing the duck .

So uh typically you would do a whole duck for a Peking duck .

But I just figured , you know , it's a lot easier just to get a hold of duck breasts .

Um you know , not so hard to handle .

So I'm gonna use duck breast here .

Uh But what we do wanna do is we wanna do the typical kind of salting and spicing that you would do for a Peking duck .

So for that , I need some sugar , some salt and some Chinese five spice .

Now just give that a mix .

Now grab a hold of your duck pieces .

Alright , so to prepare the duck , let's just pop our pieces here onto a tray .

Now you just want to Sprinkle your duck very generously with your spice mix .

So this really is one of the most important steps I think in this uh cheeks Peking duck uh recipe .

So this spice mix is doing so many things .

It's going to add so much flavor from the spicing , but also the sugar and the salt are going slightly cure the duck and that salt is going to act like a um a drying mechanism if you like because to get the most crispy beautiful skin , you really need to dry out that skin and the salt kind of draws out the moisture .

So lots of things going on .

Basically , there's always method to the madness .

Lots of methods to the madness in this case .

Um Just make sure you're really getting a lot of that mix on there on the bottom as well .

Now you wanna put it into the fridge uncovered because that air , that cold air circulating around the duck skin is going to help to dry it out .

So here is some duck that I started making yesterday .

So that's had the overnight in the fridge .

Uh And now what I wanna do is I really wanna kind of like foolproof my duck cooking because duck can really turn dry and not very nice if it is overcooked .

So what I like to do at home and I love this piece of kit because I use it at home literally like every week , every weekend .

Um , every time I'm doing a barbecue , but also when I'm doing this kind of , um you know , cooking where it's helps to be more precise .

So I'm using the meter , wireless thermometer here and I just pop that into the thickest part of that duck breast .

So the other thing I need to do here is make a glaze for the duck .

Um So we're gonna start off with an ingredient called maltose .

So it's also known as malt sugar .

Uh And what this is is even though it kind of looks like honey .

Uh it's not as sweet at all .

So it's really a about uh allowing you to crisp up that duck skin without burning too much and without adding too much sweetness if you like .

But the thing about this ingredient is when it's um at room temp or cold , it's basically very firm and hard to handle .

So you wanna just pop it into the microwave for 30 seconds and it'll be easy hours to get out .

So now it's easy to just spoon that out into a sauce spon .

And I wanna add some Chinese Xiao wine .

And now here's a very special ingredient .

So this is Chinese red vinegar and you'll see when I pour it out , it's a beautiful red color and that kind of gives you a little bit of that pink tint that you would get on a traditional Peking duck .

Now , if you can't get a hold of red vinegar , it can be a little hard to get a hold of .

Um just use a regular Chinese black vinegar or a um , red wine vinegar .

That'll help you out a little bit here as well .

Now you wanna heat this until it's bubbling , then turn the heat down a little bit and just wait for about five minutes or so , uh , until the sauce has just thickened slightly .

Now , let's finish off our pancakes .

Um , so I've got my dough here .

Now , just a little bit of flour on the dough and on the bench .

Top quick need .

And then I just want to divide it up into 16 portions .

Now , roll each of these into a little bowl and now here's the trick to doing these pancakes .

OK ?

So take one ball and just pat it out a little .

Then you brush with some sesame oil , take another ball and pat that one down , pop it on top and then roll it out .

Now , the idea here is that these pancakes cook together .

So you've got two kind of stuck together .

But that sesame oil inside allows you to pull the pancakes apart after they're cooked and you get that beautiful sesame oil aroma and also you get very thin pancakes .

So that's how it all works .

Now , just grab some baking paper , pop your pancake on top and then just keep going .

Now to cook these , you can do them two ways .

If you have a bamboo steamer , you can steam them and I kind of do it quickly here by putting one down and then layering another one on top and they just take about three or four minutes to steam .

The other way you can do it is that you can also pan fry these .

So just in a little bit of oil in a hot pan , uh two or three minutes each side , whatever suits you and the equipment you've got at home .

Now , I am for sure ready to cook this duck because I'm so keen to have some duck pancakes right now .

So the last little trick that I want to show you guys is just give the duck skin one last time to get very dry by patting it down with some paper towel and now pop your duck skin side down into a cold frying pan .

There's like a million little tips and tricks for this uh Peking duck .

But the cold pan is another one because I want to render down some of that duck fat that's directly underneath the skin .

And I wanna get the skin crisping up but I don't want it to happen too fast .

Uh Cos otherwise , uh the skin will burn before we get time for that duck fat to render .

So before I turn the heat on , I just wanna set up my cook here with my meter app .

Cos that's gonna tell me when my duck is perfectly cooked .

So I just set up to cook .

I want duck duck breast and medium is what I'm after start cook and off we go .

Now I will not have overcooked duck because I'm gonna know exactly what's going on inside that duck breast , the perfect intel .

So turn the heat on and let this process happen slowly , please because as I mentioned , I want that skin to get nice and crisp and that duck fat to render before the spices burn .

So in the meantime , I think this pancake might be ready .

Now , just be careful because that steam is really hot and you'll need to do this while the pancake is is warmish , but it is very hard to start with .

So just be careful .

Um but you just wanna peel back those two layers of pancake and pull them apart and look at that .

You can see just how perfect that is .

You can see my fingers through the pancake .

That means it's a perfect Chinese Peking duck pancake .

Now , once you can hear and see that duck skin is sizzling , um just make sure you keep an eye on the duck just to have a look .

Ah , and that's looking really good to me right now .

We've been about sort of six or seven minutes here in the pan and I've got that really beautiful color on that duck skin .

It's just starting to sort of like puff up a little and and kind of get all nice and toasty .

Alright , so I'm just gonna turn the duck over now on this meat side , I don't wanna give it too long at all , literally maybe a minute , ok .

Now duck comes out onto a tray and here we are with our final step for the duck .

I know we've done a lot of steps in the duck but I promise you it's a lot less than the 50 million steps it takes to make a whole Peking duck , ok ?

So I need my glaze here and you can see that's thickened up slightly as it cooled down a little bit on the bench top .

Now , I wanna put these guys under a hot grill for about five minutes , but I wouldn't go anywhere .

I would just be sort of hovering near your duck .

Um I want you to be glazing it every so often uh and keeping an eye on that duck skin so it doesn't burn .

You'll see it'll look glorious in just a minute .

These guys are looking so good .

I'm just gonna keep glazing here .

Now , my meter app is telling me that that duck breast is at the perfect temperature to take out of the oven .

So I'm gonna listen to the technology .

Ok .

So just check out our duck .

I mean that skin looks so glorious .

Look at the color .

It's so sticky and shiny .

Now , just let that duck rest for a few minutes .

And actually what will happen is that sticky glaze on the top will firm up a little .

So you get a little bit more of that crispy crunch .

Oh Look at that .

That duck is ridiculously juicy .

I have to say , wow , I love that mahogany lacquered skin .

That's so beautiful .

And look , it's not gonna have like the really super glass crunching kind of crispiness of a traditional Peking duck .

But if you have a listen to this , I mean , for a cheats version that's pretty good in my book .

And so this is how the setup goes for the Peking duck pancake spread .

So you've got your cucumber and spring onion , hoisin the pancakes , the duck .

Uh And then what you wanna do is grab a hold of a pancake , a spread of hoisin sauce , some cucumber and spring onion and that duck .

So there you go .

My friends , Peking Duck pancakes .

We did a lot of the hard work .

I mean , we made the pancakes from scratch .

Uh You know , there were multiple steps involved in that duck , but it was a lot quicker , a lot easier than a traditional Peking duck .

And let me test out whether it's tasty enough for you .

Yeah , I mean , I'm getting all the right Peking duck pancake vibes right now .

It's actually amazing how much that duck skin really does kind of crisp up as it cools down .

Hm .

And then you have that lovely , you know , that combination of the hoisin and the vegetables and the pancake .

It's just , you know , it's hitting all the right notes for a Peking duck pancake at home .

Ah , yum .

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Thanks .

See you .