The Sinosphere · Volume 33, The Mala Basin
Tea-smoked duck / Zhangcha ya (樟茶鸭)
Chengdu, Sichuan
Illustration
- Time
- 3 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 96 sources in the brief
Dated to under 150 years old and tied to a specific court connection: Ding Baozhen, the same official credited with kung pao chicken, sent the Chengdu chef Huang Jinlin to cook for Empress Dowager Cixi, where Huang reworked an existing smoked-duck method using Sichuanese camphor leaves and tea, and brought the recipe home on his retirement, where it became a fixture of Sichuanese banquet cooking.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 3 hours, including curing and smoking.
Ingredients
- 1 whole duck
- 10g salt, 1g Sichuan pepper, ginger and garlic to taste crushed Sichuan pepper, salt, ginger and garlic, for the dry brine
- a generous handful each black tea leaves, camphor leaves, brown sugar and rice, for smoking
- enough to submerge the duck master stock, for poaching
Method
- Cure the whole duck in a dry brine with the crushed Sichuan pepper, salt, ginger and garlic.
- Blanch briefly in boiling water to tighten and gloss the skin.
- Smoke over a mixture of black tea leaves, camphor leaves, brown sugar and rice, at a controlled 70 to 80°C, for one to two hours, so the smoke permeates slowly rather than scorching the skin.
- Poach gently in a master stock, then finish with a deep fry to crisp the skin.
Notes
Done properly this gives a jujube-red, glossy, crisp-skinned bird with a tea-and-Sichuan-pepper aroma running right through the meat.
What a modern chef changes
Kamado smoking and a sous vide poach
Rung 6
Method
- Camphor leaves are not readily available in Britain, and this book will not pretend otherwise; approximate the note with extra black tea and a little cassia bark rather than omitting it silently.
- Smoke the cured, blanched duck on the Big Green Egg at a sustained 80°C for the full one to two hours, which gives the even, low, long heat a stovetop wok-smoking setup cannot sustain, and enough room to smoke the whole bird rather than the boneless-breast simplification most home versions fall back on.
- Poach the smoked duck sous vide in its master stock at 85°C for two hours instead of stovetop poaching, which keeps the meat evenly tender without the risk of the skin softening unevenly, then dry the skin thoroughly and refrigerate uncovered for a few hours before the final fry, for a crisper finish.