Roasted Duck: Alice Knows Best

Start Your Culinary Journey Today

It's all a matter of degree.

I remember learning that lesson the hard way. I was "preparing" my first mallard, a jumbo-sized, grain-fattened drake that I shot from a coffin blind in a South Dakota cornfield.

A good friend and I went on an epic cross-country scouting mission the night before, and needless to say we found a very respectable late-season feed of impervious-to-winter mallards.

About three inches of snow had already blanketed the ground. The temperature had dipped into the teens for about a week. And most water sources, except for the largest of the large, were frozen. Still, with any luck, we figured one good hunt—the year's swan song, we thought—was at hand.

We weren't disappointed (that, incidentally, would come several hours later).

The short story: We each killed four burly greenheads and called it a year. That afternoon I dressed the birds and plucked one specifically for the roasting pan.

I had my grandmother on my mind; Alice (yes, I called my grandmother by her first name!) had perfected roasted duck. The skin was always crispy and the meat was fall-off-the-bone tender and succulent. The mere thought of Alice's oven-roasted duck sent my salivary glands into involuntarily release, like water spilling from a dam.

I was pumped to get in the kitchen and begin my gastronomic journey.

I filled the birds' cavity with quartered apples and onions, massaged the skin with a prepared dry rub, placed the mallard in the roasting pan, and added some braising liquid for good measure.

The oven was already preheated. The temperature: 475 degrees. I followed Alice's directions to the letter. Or so I thought.

One major problem: I over-shot the oven temperature by 200 degrees. Instead of cooking the bird low and slow I roasted it hot and fast. Who knew oven temperature mattered so much?

The ‘Strait’ Skinny: Jeff Foiles on the Hot Seat

Celebrity Waterfowler Facing Serious Charges in U.S., Canada

I remember, and vividly so, the first time I met Jeff Foiles.

It was at Game Fair, the popular late-summer outdoor show near Anoka, Minnesota. A semi-circle had formed around Foiles, who was wearing a lanyard thick with his designer Strait Meat calls and glittery waterfowl bands, the spoils of his many years of gunning. The shoulder-to-shoulder scrum, mostly young duck hunters acting like star-struck groupies, were hanging on his every word, like he had just discovered the cure for cancer.

The adulation of these twenty-something waterfowlers shocked me and clearly tickled Foiles. I had never seen such blind hero worship for anyone, let alone someone who for a living guided hunters, manufactured calls and produced hunting videos.

He's not JC, I remember thinking.

For the first time as a reporter, I watched the celebrity waterfowling culture reveal itself, and Jeff Foiles was its Pied Piper. He held court that day like he had just been given the keys to the kingdom; like he was entitled to something long overdue. The entire mini drama curdled my stomach (it still does), but Foiles was merely basking in his celebrity and leveraging his momentum. His calls were hot. His videos too. And his stature in the waterfowling industry was growing as fast as his ego. With a blend of arrogance and narcissism put at odds only by an occasional nod to modesty, Foiles seemed to be living—and enjoying—the good life.

USDA Announces New CRP Signup; Will Prairie-nesting Ducks Benefit? Not likely

Let’s start with the illusion of good news: The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for the second time in as many years, has announced a new general Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) signup for interested landowners.

The USDA would like to enroll 4 million acres into the program, so says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The new acres will be put on the rolls in October.

Now the bad news: Roughly 4.4 million CRP acres are set to expire in 2011, which means a net loss of roughly 400,000 acres. What’s more, over the next few years, a slew of expiring CRP contracts will occur in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), AKA the duck factory of the Dakotas and parts of Montana and Minnesota.

Translation: Prairie-nesting birds (game and nongame) in general and ducks in particular will lose thousands upon thousands of acres of indispensable grassland habitat, the consequences of which will affect hunters, especially duck hunters throughout the U.S., in the years ahead.