{"id":874,"date":"2025-09-16T10:30:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T10:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/?p=874"},"modified":"2025-10-13T12:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:58:07","slug":"sous-vide-duck-breasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/sous-vide-duck-breasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Sous Vide Duck Breasts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The main problem I have had with Gressingham duck breasts, when cooked in the way described on the package – fry the fat off, bake to cook through – is that the duck breasts always came out much smaller when they were cooked, even though I baked them for the absolute minimum time in the recipe. They also tended to be a little tougher than I wanted, and cooked part way through, rather than nice and medium-rare almost to the edge. The answer to these problems is mentioned in the heading…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two vacuum packed, seasoned duck breasts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Two duck breasts in the sous vide pan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The thing about ducks, you know, is that they float. I nearly included a Monty Python clip at this point, but you either know which one I mean, or you won’t understand at all, so I left it out. Anyway. Three hours at 55\u00b0C, pushing them away from the heater every once in a while. Then I heated a cast iron pan to what is technically known as bloody hot, gave them enough of a frying to crisp the fat up (yes, I know, a few seconds more would have been even better…) and served them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unshrunken duck breast, baked potato, steamed broccoli, and sauce.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The shot that shows it was worth the faff…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is definitely the way I will do those lovely Gressingham duck breasts<\/strong> (can I have some freebies, please, Gressingham?) from now on, only I will flash fry the skin a little more, to render the remaining fat you can see. The meat did not shrink, and it was not overdone at the edges. And the tenderness was noticeable, compared to the traditional method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update: The Gressingham web site<\/a> has more detail than I have given, about how to make both sous vide duck breasts, and confit duck legs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main problem I have had with Gressingham duck breasts, when cooked in the way described on the package – fry the fat off, bake to cook through – is that the duck breasts always came out much smaller when they were cooked, even though I baked them for the absolute minimum time in the … Continue reading “Sous Vide Duck Breasts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":894,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}