Beak to Tail Eating

Muscovy Duck

I just got my hands on a whole lots of duck, two to be precise. When I ordered them, I knew that it was a good price per pound, but I didn’t know how big they would be.


The two beasts were 17lbs total, along with a 2lb bag of duck fat. Needless to say my backpack was a little heavy coming home from work today.



My excitement was so much that I stayed in to cook, canceling one get together and missing a birthday entirely. It’s only a problem with it interferes with my life, right, right?

This evening was a great exploration into nose to tail eating. Fergus Henderson explores this concept in his book The Whole Best: Nose to Tail Eating but the idea is nothing new. Many cultures take advantage of the whole animal, most notably for me, the Chinese. On a recent trip to China, in a rural town somewhere in the mountains of Hunan province, our hot pot was being prepared. As I stood my the entrance to the kitchen, a tiled room with children running wild, the freshly slaughtered chicken was being prepared. It took about 5 minutes of hand waving and gesturing while I repeated “mei yu” (no want) and pointed wildly to my feet, head and stomach. Little did I realize at the time, that these were the best parts. The woman/proprietor/chef/owner/waitress looked at me as if I was crazy. Waste not, want not.

This idea is nothing new to restaurants either. In order to keep food costs down, and to avoid wasting, ever scrap is used somewhere. Beef scraps are made into stews, vegetable trimmings are turned into stocks. Not only does this save foods, it creates profits from potential losses.

Nothing went to wasted today in my kitchen as one of my favourite proteins was transformed into deliciousness for weeks to come. They are native to south America, but these ones were bred and slaughtered in Ontario. The live birds have a musky smell, possibly to origin of the name musk. The meat is more like that of veal than chicken and doesn’t get a greasy texture when cooked like other types of duck. Despite the large fat reserves in the skin, the meat is very lean. They have a great deal of fat, which was perfect for my purposes. If only they had left innards, I’m sure I could have found something to do with the liver (fois-fois gras is made from force feeding is done with ducks in Canada as opposed to goose in France).

Of the two birds and 2lbs of fat, I made:
A lot of rendered fat
Duck breast Pruiciuto (and one flavoured with a juniper cure
Duck confit
Duck Pho, Vietnamese noodle soup.