By Sam Sifton
- Total Time
- 5 hours, mostly unattended
- Rating
- 4(109)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This is a hack of an old recipe from David McMillan and Fred Morin of the restaurant Joe Beef in Montreal, who match sea scallops with pulled pork and hollandaise sauce for a delicious dish. For reasons of habit, taste or happenstance, I started making it with duck instead. It seems like a lot of work — two species, a fancy sauce — but a lot of the cooking is unattended, and the sauce, you’ll see, is quite easy to pull off, at least the second time you try. The resulting meal is excessive and fantastic. It begs for a watercress salad with a bright, acidic dressing.
Featured in: A Meal of Joyous Excess for the Holidays
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Ingredients
Yield:4 to 6 servings
- 14- to 6-pound duck
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Barbecue sauce or hoisin sauce, to taste
- 7egg yolks, at room temperature
- 1cup unsalted butter
- Pinch cayenne, or to taste
- 1tablespoon lemon juice, or to taste
- Salt, to taste
- 3tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1pound sea scallops, patted dry
- Kosher salt, to taste
- 1tablespoon dry white vermouth or white wine
- 1tablespoon finely chopped parsley, for garnish
For the Duck
For the Hollandaise Sauce
For the Scallops
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
1531 calories; 148 grams fat; 61 grams saturated fat; 1 gram trans fat; 62 grams monounsaturated fat; 16 grams polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 0 grams sugars; 43 grams protein; 1213 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
Step
1
Make the duck. Heat oven to 325. Remove giblets and neck from duck cavity, and discard or reserve for another use. Cut off excess fat from duck cavity. Place duck on a rack in a deep roasting pan, breast-side up, and season with salt and pepper. Then slide the pan into the oven and cook, undisturbed, for 2 hours.
Step
2
Remove duck from oven, and use the point of a sharp knife to prick the skin of the bird, all over the breasts and thighs. Return bird to oven, and cook for 1 to 2 more hours, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh measures around 155 degrees.
Step
3
Increase oven temperature to 450, and cook until the duck is golden and crisp, 15 to 30 minutes.
Step
4
Carefully remove the roasting pan from the oven, and transfer the duck to a cutting board. (Let the fat in the pan cool, then store it, covered, in the refrigerator. It is an excellent medium for roasting potatoes.) Allow the duck to rest for a few minutes, then shred it, using two forks to pull the meat apart. Add your favorite barbecue sauce, to taste, or your favorite hoisin sauce, to taste. Keep warm.
Step
5
Make the hollandaise. Put yolks into a small container into which you can fit an immersion blender, or into the jar of a blender.
Step
6
Melt the butter in a small saucepan set over medium heat, then allow it to cool for a few minutes.
Step
7
Process the yolks for a couple of seconds, then continue to run the blender as you add the melted butter in a slow and careful stream, until you have a thin, emulsified sauce. Add the cayenne, lemon juice and salt to taste, blend again to combine and keep at room temperature until ready to use.
Step
8
Make the scallops. Place a large sauté pan or skillet over medium-high heat, and add to it 3 tablespoons of the butter. When it has melted and started to foam, place the scallops in the pan in a single layer, and season with a pinch or two of salt.
Step
9
Cook scallops without moving until the bottoms are golden brown, approximately 2 to 3 minutes, then turn them over, add the wine and cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes.
Step
10
To serve the dish, spoon hollandaise on a plate or platter, then top with the scallops, brown-side up. Top scallops with shredded duck (you’ll have some leftover for sandwiches tomorrow), and drizzle with hollandaise.
Ratings
4
out of 5
109
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Cooking Notes
Barbara
SamAcidic dressing for the watercress, what do you recommend?
Charles Michener
For crisp skin, I first render some of the duck fat by plunging the duck into boiling water (10 minutes). Let cool, pat dry and rub with salt, pepper and paprika. Then prick the skin all over with a sharp fork, being careful to pierce only the skin, not the flesh. (Hold the fork at an angle.) I start the roasting at a high temperature (450) for 15 minutes. Then turn it down to 350. Every 30 minutes or so, remove duck fat drippings from bottom of roasting pan to prevent flare-ups and burning.
eileen
I cut the prep time to <30 minutes by buying half a roast duck in Chinatown. Makes the recipe so much more doable.
Sam Sifton
Lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and a dash of Dijon to help it emulsify.
Kenneth
Duck was done much sooner than recipe indicated (internal temp was 175 after 3 hours at 325; nevertheless delicious. I suggest that after shredding the duck meat, further crisp some of the skin in the oven, then crumble and use as garnish. Might be gilding the lily for an already rich dish, but what the hey, it was New Years eve and a little crunch is always welcome.
charles rotmil
I liked adding a bain marie, a pan of water in the oven, to add moisture as I slow cook the duck
Elena
No, classic Hollandaise is not cooked.
paula
After initial 2 hrs at 325 duck was at 180 degrees!
Joan
A traditional hollandaise is made with eggs and the juice from a whole lemon cooked over low heat until the eggs froth. Butter is then beaten into it to form an emulsion. It tends to be a bit more tart than the version here.
Nice dish to begin the holiday!
I made this dish using duck confit, so delicious. I was out of white wine, so I used dry sherry instead to deglaze the scallop pan. I then added melted butter that I infused with saffron and cayenne, lemon and honey. My husband doesn’t like Hollandaise sauce so I reduced this pan sauce and used it instead. I served salad with an orange vingarette as dressing. My husband loved this dish! I’ll be making it again.
Scott A
Don't you mean clarified butter to cook the scallops in?
higgs boson
if you add just a few lighlty crushed seeds of star anises to the melting butter in the pan fr the sacllops, you'll add an incredibly delicious flavour to the dish. grilles star anise seeds add a fantastic taste to both scallops and duck !
Marianne
Excessive? Two species? I would say so. Nevermind shredded. Can the language used in cooking be any less respectful of the lives taken?
Ed
This combo sounds interesting for sure. The recipe says to add hoisin or bbq sauce to the shredded duck, but in the pic, it looks like no sauce was added. Also, those are strong sauces. How much should I add? Go light or heavy with the sauces? Lastly, wouldn’t it make sense to put some of the crispy duck skin on top of the plated dish?
Elizabeth
Made this for NewYears Eve dinner with friends one year. Spectacular!!!Of course I will also use any excuse to roast a duck
Terry
Made this for a New Year’s Eve dinner. Scrumptious!! And just right. Very easy. Very rich — but that’s ok. Served with baby kale mix with key lime and olive oil dressing (heavy on the lime).Did also find duck didn’t take as long to cook as recipe indicated. Not a problem— and in fact an advantage as gives time to finish cleaning kitchen well before dinner. Just reheated duck on low power in microwave.
Matt
Had some duck rillette when I made this. Heated it up and used it. It was great
Vernonstwhiz
Uhm, Why does it not look like the're is BBQ or Hoisin Sauce on the duck in the photo? I will assume that anything other than a very small amount might overpower the other ingredients? Thoughts anyone?I like the Chinatown duck suggestion.
Joan
I also used duck leg confit and thought it was much easier than cooking a whole duck. I made a classic hollandaise and found that the hoisin sauce really clashed with it so I omitted the hoisin and just dressed the scallops and duck with the hollandaise. But I can see how the hoisin might work with the less acidic hollandaise in the recipe. I think I would like to try it with pulled pork.
Kenneth
Duck was done much sooner than recipe indicated (internal temp was 175 after 3 hours at 325; nevertheless delicious. I suggest that after shredding the duck meat, further crisp some of the skin in the oven, then crumble and use as garnish. Might be gilding the lily for an already rich dish, but what the hey, it was New Years eve and a little crunch is always welcome.
paula
After initial 2 hrs at 325 duck was at 180 degrees!
Clara
I wanted a more substantial meal - and I only had duck legs - cuisse - so I roasted them and served them whole topped with Hoi Sin with the scallops on the side topped with Hollandaise. Very rich indeed but very yummy; a surprising mix of flavours. I also only had red endive (radichhio) which was perfect actually with the bitterness of the leaves offsetting the richness of the rest very well.
eileen
I cut the prep time to <30 minutes by buying half a roast duck in Chinatown. Makes the recipe so much more doable.
Edgar
A duck is about the same size as a large chicken and if I cooked a chicken as long as you recommend on the duck it would either be as hard as a brick or, worse, incinerated. Up to 41/2 hrs at 350 degrees would put the duck at 350 degrees not 155 degrees.
Maria
Duck is extremely fatty, you can't compare it with chicken.
Linda Larson
We'd already cooked a duck on Friday night and your recipe came into our email on Sat. So we used the leftover duck breast for this which made our xmas eve dinner for two even easier. Tasty, decadent and perfect.
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