Inside the Art of Making Traditional Peking Duck in New York City

Welcome. We are here in Flushing, New York, the biggest Chinatown in New York City. We're here because I've been told the most traditional Peking duck in New York City is made at Joe's Shanghai here in Tangram Mall. This is a regular mall. Welcome to the prep kitchen. This is where all of the Peking duck prep begins. The whole day is about building up to a perfect glassy, crispy, crunchy skin and nothing in the preparation process will compromise that texture. The air gets pumped underneath the skin of the duck to release the skin from the flesh itself. This gives it ample space for that fat to render out during the cooking process. Making a slit underneath the armpit of the roast duck

to remove all of the organs. The reason why the slit is right there is to preserve the integrity of the skin so it doesn't split. Chef is taking off the duck feet, making a little bit of slit in the neck to release any of the remaining blood. It also is going to be the entrance for his air pump. Traditionally, this is probably the most iconic step in making Peking duck. These ducks come in from Long Island every single day. They're very special duck that has its roots in Chinese style Peking duck but was introduced, crossbred and become really its own breed of duck today.

Chef in the US has noticed some differences. One of them is that during the butchery process, American Peking duck isn't bled thoroughly after it's killed and so it will retain some of its like unpleasant gaminess. The leeks and the ginger and the Sichuan peppercorn and the lemon in the blanching process help get rid of all of that nasty blood flavor. They're like balloons. They are quite cartoonish. You can see all the nasty pink liquid coming out. All of that is gaminess and you can smell it in the air, too. He's also trying to get a lot of water inside of the balloon of the carcass to flush out the inside of the duck. You can

imagine cleaning a balloon inside out. It's a tedious process. It takes a lot of work, but it also is quite delicate because you don't want to damage the skin. The minute that you have any excessive holes in the skin of the duck, you'll lose the integrity of the entire structure of that skin. Chef is blanching the ducks to tighten that skin. As it comes in contact just for a couple of seconds with boiling hot water, the surface proteins are going to tighten up exposing the pores so that later it'll dry more consistently and more thoroughly. The duck before it goes in hot water is a little bit wrinkly, it's bubbly, but as he dunks into that hot water even for just a couple of

seconds, three, four, five, it'll come out nice, white, glossy like an inflated balloon. Without this blanching process, the duck is not going to dry consistently and that duck skin is not going to be as crispy and as consistent as it could be. The next step is to start glazing them and drying them. The drying room is next door. Come with me. And Chef is glazing them with a little bit of a warm glazing liquid. Now, every single place does it a little bit differently. Chef is glazing the ducks with this pale yellow liquid. We're calling it a glaze here, but it's not as thick as a barbecue glaze. It's more like a syrup.

There isn't a huge amount of flavor here, so most of the spices, the lemon, the onions is for getting rid of gaminess. It's not so much for really seasoning that duck. The glaze does two things. The first is the sugar that clings to the skin. As it meets heat, it's going to help encourage that caramelization, that Maillard reaction. It's going to give it that nice color and a little bit of that sugar shatter crust shell. The second thing is sugar is actually going to pull out a little bit of moisture from that skin to help the dehydration process. One of the things I've noticed is that throughout this entire preparation process, there actually isn't a huge amount of salt or seasoning or spices involved. The duck

in the original Beijing Peking style is supposed to be flavorful enough that you won't need a huge amount of seasoning. This room is cool, close to about 40°. It feels like a walk-in, but there's a gigantic fan on the side and two gigantic DeWalt fans, industrial fans mounted at the top, and they're going to encourage a huge amount of air flow to make sure that water evaporates despite being at that low temperature. Between this drying room and the fridge on the outside, it will probably dry between 1 and 2 days before it gets roasted. It's a little less than I expected, to be honest. It's not a dry-aging process,

it's just a dehydration process. The ducks at the back are the ones that have been there for a day, and you'll see that they've picked up a little bit of color just from moisture evaporating. When you see that tight skin, that gloss, you'll know that the duck is almost ready to be roasted. Take a look at this fridge outside. This is the one that's on display. All of these ducks have been sufficiently dried, and you'll see that the color is a little bit different. It's lighter brown, it's a little bit yellow, and you can see how tight the skin is going to be. There used to be a tradition in Beijing when people ordered Peking duck, they would pick their specific raw duck carcasses that they would want, and then

they would write their names onto the front of the breast. It did two things. Number one, if the skin was still wet, the ink wouldn't set, and they would know that the duck wouldn't come out right. The second is that after the roasting process, if they could still see their name written in black ink on the top of the duck, then you would know that the duck was roasted properly, it wasn't burned, and it was made just for you. This is the famed roast duck oven. Whoa. So hot. This oven is really quite special. Came from China. They had it built purposely for this. It is a ming huo lu. The flames are exposed.

Traditionally, Beijing roast duck, Peking duck, would have been done with something like fruitwood or charcoal. That's really hard to get permitting here in New York City, but this is the next best thing. This open flame means that chef has more control over the cooking of the duck. He can bring it out to the front, rotate it, use the flame to get it to lick certain parts of that duck that aren't fully cooked yet to get that nice consistent shell. The number one arbiter of whether Peking duck is proper Peking duck is the texture and the quality of that skin. They're looking for glassy, crispy, crunchy in the center of the breast and on the legs that's a little bit more fattiness. The

gold standard is you are bo ni. You are bo ni in Chinese means fatty but not greasy. Chef is explaining that there is three steps to roasting duck. Zhao, kao, liao. Zhao first is to warm it up. That starts at the back. Slightly lower temperature at the back of the oven. Slowly bring that temperature up. The first thing that's going to happen, the remaining water in that skin is going to evaporate. As that water evaporates, it's going to punch out and eventually it set into this basically foamy type of structure, right? You need all of those proteins to set with the air bubbles in the middle as the water continues to

punch out and that becomes the shell. That solid fat needs to become liquid and drip off down the body out. You need just enough fat to render out so it doesn't feel greasy, but you need that fat to basically fry the duck skin inside out so you have a nice crispy, almost chicharrón thickness level of skin throughout the entire duck carcass. The second step is khao, which is roast. And the duck comes further forward towards the heat source. Chef will begin spitting it to be even, and they'll let that shell really harden and pick up that dark, sort of burnished red color. So, Chef is now going through the liao process of singeing off certain parts of the duck, hitting it with just a little

bit of heat from that exposed flame in the front. He's rotating it. He's checking for doneness of the meat. He's checking for any pale spots on the skin and from a color perspective, you'll see that even sometimes when the skin or the moisture has punched out of the skin and it runs down the side of the duck, it has these imperfections, these little like trails of moisture. Chef is trying to get rid of as much as possible to keep it nice and aesthetic. Their standards at the end of the day are very high, and it's standards that Chef has maintained for about 30 years. It's about a cook of between 60 minutes and 80-90 minutes. It really depends on the size and the temperature of the oven. Dinner service

is about to begin. I need to order mine. Let's go sit down. Peking duck is the national dish of China, which is to say that it is the dish that represents the entire culture and centuries of culinary development the best. Here we are, on the other side of the world, in Flushing, New York, inside of a mall, eating this duck that has evolved for hundreds of years. That's kind of special. Here, ready? Look at this thing. Consistent color, puffed up. And when you look kind of closely, you can see the fat rendering out in between the layers of skin. A little bit of translucence means that fat is rendering out and it's starting to fry

itself inside out. If you don't eat it hot, the fat's going to start to congeal and it's going to lose a lot of the texture. So, time is of the essence. Whenever you order here, it's roasted to order, and then you get it cut table side. First cut, down the center along the breast, just a little strip in the middle. This is the prized cut. Look at that strip in the middle. So, he's going to let it air out. He's going to let it air out on the side. Just let it get crispy, get it like harden, let the rest of the steam off, and you can hear it.

It's a very gentle crunch, really nice and consistent. Wow. Oh my goodness, why is there caviar in it? Wow. Chef is now going through the side of the leg. Dark meat, you can see is a consistent color. It's not red at all. It's fully cooked. That's one of the interesting things about Peking duck is actually because you're roasting it for so long, it's well-done, but still it is really quite juicy. I mean, you can see the liquid coming out of it. It's a course, the duck breast is the most prized part. The way that they slice it is also traditional. Some people will call it a willow cut, some people will call it fish scale cut, but the idea is that every single slice will have a thin sliver of skin

and then a thin sliver of flesh. The balance between the fattiness of the skin and the leanness and the flavorfulness of the breast is better expressed from these cuts. One of the more interesting things to me about the Peking duck experience is the variance in texture. On the sides of the breast, you'll see a little bit of this crescent shape. On the back, what sometimes people will call the brisket, as we learned in Hong Kong, will be something of a more tender flesh with a thinner layer of skin. Usually, it is served with some sort of thing or pancake, I suppose. In this case, they're called lotus leaf pancakes, basically a flour tortilla.

The other things on the table, tian mian jiang, sometimes called sweet bean sauce, sometimes called sweet flour sauce. It's a fermented soybean paste that is cooked down with a little bit of sesame, sesame oil, and sugar. In traditional Peking duck, Peking duck is not seasoned thoroughly. That's what the sauce is there for. The main flavor of the duck is going to be a delicious aromatic fattiness, and so, in order to cut through any taste of grease or any unpleasant fattiness, you have things like onion, you have a little bit of acidity from something like a pickle or hawthorn to cut through that grease. The idea is that in one bite, it all works together, all of the flavor profiles are balanced.

This is the time to address the fact that this is ridiculous. This is the first episode of Strictly Tweets filmed outside of Asia, back in New York, and we've sold ourselves out. We're eating a dynastic thousand-year-old dish with caviar in a mall. Fatty piece of skin, the center cut, yi kou su, one bite crisp, caviar over the top. This is the recommended serve. got to say, I don't want any of the other stuff with because this piece of skin alone is magical. You hardly ever get to see duck skin of this thickness in New York City. Of This is what all that preparation was for, was to see this elevation of the skin away from the flesh, and the top

layer punching out with the moisture until it becomes not just crispy, but crunchy. The staff are here to show you how it's done properly. With a duck breast as a paintbrush, you're painting the sides of the view. Couple of pieces laid vertically. Cucumbers, not too much. For texture, a little bit of washed onions. The bottom comes up. Oh, I see. So tight. Oh, wow. Duck bone soup? Oh, amazing. Can I have a Xie? That was phase one of the bill. The second phase is the rest of the duck carcass gets repurposed into another dish. Soup. I mean, this is a classic

appropriation of the leftovers, right? Good. Salty. Yeah, a little bit of the spine, little bit of rib, some cartilage, and then the parts of the wings, part of the leg bones become this fried crispy salt and pepper dish. You can also order this spicy with a little bit of chili. Good if you're drinking beer. There are probably some minor differences between the way the duck tastes here and the way the duck tastes in Beijing. But, that's not to say that Yushi isn't still dedicated to traditional craftsmanship. And, I think that this is probably the closest experience that I've ever had to Peking duck in Beijing, but here in New York City. It's a delight.