Roast duck diaries
Beijing Duck in Auckland’s eastern suburb of Panmure upholds the tradition of preparing and roasting whole duck in the time-honoured way
Li Yuan at the door of Beijing Duck
Roast duck can be enjoyed at a plethora of places across the isthmus, but roast duck prepared in the traditional Beijing style is far rarer – perhaps only three restaurants in Tāmaki Makaurau can lay claim to serving true Beijing duck (also commonly known as Peking duck). One of them nestles unassumingly on Panmure’s diverse Queens Rd, the aptly named Beijing Duck, established by husband and wife team Li Yuan (chef) and Jiang Jie (front of house) 17 years ago.
Beijing duck involves a heck of a lot of patience, and rather exacting skill, to prepare. Beijing-born Li’s been doing it since 1984, putting in 12 years of training at one of his home city’s most renowned purveyors of the dish, the restaurant Beijing Quan Ju De, which has been trading since 1864.
The first key difference you’ll find with Li’s duck is that he cooks it to order. No pre-cooked birds hanging up waiting to be snapped up by punters: instead, customers just need to call a few hours in advance (or 24 hours in advance for projected weekend duck cravings), and Li will be drawing your very own crispy duck from the oven at precisely the right time. Although the oven in Li’s kitchen is not the old-school wood fired brick type traditionally used in Beijing, his custom-made stainless steel oven achieves a remarkable result, cooking up to 10 ducks at a time.
It’s in the hours leading up to that point of pulling the cooked duck from the oven that the bulk of the work takes place. When I visit, I meet an older kitchen hand sitting at a low counter in the prep section of the restaurant’s large kitchen plucking residual feathers from the fresh whole (head still on) ducks, which are sourced from a farm in Cambridge in the Waikato. I can feel the muscles in my hand and wrist cramping just watching him perform the task. “In Beijing”, Li tells me, “We don’t need to do this step, because the ducks arrive at the restaurant completely free of feathers”. It’s painstaking work that takes time – but it’s another in a long chain of reasons why Li’s duck is a notch above.
The ducks are then carefully washed and dried. Air is pumped into the neck cavity to balloon the skin and separate it from the fat – another key step in achieving ultimate crisp. The birds are then doused in a maltose syrup; this gives the skin that glossy brick-red colour during the roast. They’re hung up to dry with the aid of fans. “This can take 5-6 hours in summer, or in winter a bit longer, maybe 7-8 hours when the weather is wet”, says Li. Whereas Cantonese-style roast duck tends to see the cavity stuffed with aromatics like star anise and ginger, Beijing-style duck sees the birds go straight into the oven after the drying process – the flavour and texture of the duck is the star of the show.
When Li pulls the burnished duck from the oven, the next key part of his job begins. The restaurant continues the tradition of the chef carving up the duck tableside – a job that Li alone is tasked with at Beijing Duck – you can imagine what a mammoth task this must be at Lunar New Year when he sometimes cooks and carves 50 ducks in a single day. As I sit making notes, Li begins the gentle art of carving the bird, firstly separating some of the skin, which he dips in a wee dish of white sugar and feeds me. This is a seriously good way to kick things off! Like a thin shard of toffee, the skin shatters against my tongue and the lick of sugar amplifies its natural sweetness. Li continues to carefully and silently carve up the bird, his bite-sized pieces, each wearing a layer of juicy yellow fat and crisp lacquer of skin, forming a pile on the serving plate alongside the initial carving of pure skin.
A basket of steamed pancakes, julienned spring onion and cucumber, and a dark, glossy sauce complete the picture. Li used to make the pancakes himself but they switched to buying them in, preferring to concentrate efforts on the bird. The sauce however is made in the kitchen – its flavour profile is akin to hoisin but less sweet and more complex, made to Li’s secret recipe with balanced notes of aromatics, sesame oil, sweetness and umami.
Like any good chef Li frowns upon food waste; the heads of those ducks get put to use in another of his signature dishes, Salt and Spicy Duck Chin. The cooking juices from the duck go into a soup which is served complimentary alongside the roast duck, the wings are used in a standalone dish, and customers may also like to also order deep fried duck bones as an extra course. It’s a beautiful concept, using the whole animal to its full potential and proving that decadence need not mean wastefulness.
38 Queens Road, Panmure, Auckland | Website
