Duck Sausage

Duck is the richest of the birds I hunt, and it takes a French hand rather than a smoky one. Ground with pork and seasoned with juniper, orange zest, thyme and a little red wine, wild duck makes a dark, gamey, elegant sausage — the kind of thing you’d pan-roast and serve with lentils or a cherry sauce, not something you’d bury in mustard. The skin fat is soft and greasy, so it comes off; the flavor is all in the dark meat.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb)

• 1,590 g (3.5 lb) skinned duck meat — breast and leg, tendons and silverskin removed — ~70%
• 680 g (1.5 lb) pork back fat or fatty pork shoulder — ~30% (skim the duck’s soft skin fat off and render it separately for cooking; don’t grind it)

SEASONING

• 41 g salt (1.8%)
• 6 g juniper berries, crushed
• 6 g coarse black pepper
• 6 g fresh garlic, minced
• 4 g fresh thyme, chopped

grated zest of 1 orange

• 120 ml (½ cup) dry red wine, cold
• NO cure — fresh sausage (add Cure #1 at 156 ppm only if you’ll smoke it)
• 32 mm hog casing, or bulk

Directions

1. Key ingredients: the smoked, wintry cousin of this is my Smoked Wild Goose Sausage — same waterfowl idea, one leans French and fresh, the other leans hickory.
2. Pick the shot and pull the tendons: wild duck legs are tendon-heavy and there will be pellets. Deal with both now.
3. Grind cold: duck and pork fat near-frozen, through a 1/4” (6 mm) plate.
4. Mix: juniper, orange, thyme, garlic and the cold wine to a tacky bind — cold the whole time.
5. Rest overnight so the juniper and orange settle in.
6. Cook gently: pan-roast the links and finish in a low oven, or brown bulk and use in a cassoulet or with lentils. Don’t overcook — even duck goes dry past done.

Notes

Juniper is duck’s natural partner — it’s the resiny, gin-like note that cuts the richness. Orange does the same job from the sweet side. Between them they turn what could be a heavy, livery sausage into something balanced.

Domestic duck works and is fatter — with farmed duck you can drop the added pork fat to ~20%, because the bird brings more of its own. Wild duck is leaner and needs the full third.

This is the French end of my game shelf, the counterpart to the rustic smoked goose. Both come off the same fall marsh; they just want opposite kitchens.