Truly what the hell were they thinking and what the hell was I thinking.

R

richard-in-cincy

Well-known member
I have my duck roast confit down to a science. I saw a post about

Römertopf Roast Duck, and, intrigued, i had to try it.

I wasted a duck. I got a lot of fat. And I am incensed that just anyone can post these shit "recipes" that do not work!

I know how to cook and make wondrous things in my kitchen. I've never posted to the world about how to make things because have a lot to learn.

Caveat emptor, y'all.

I will boil this mess tomorrow in the hopes of getting some nice stock.

 
Amen, Richard, amen! It is hard to try out a brand new recipe you've never made before when some

comments assure you, "This is the best XXX I've ever made," along with others that report, "This is the worst XXX I've ever made!" I spend a lot of time reading reviews and comparing the good reports with the bad reports and then comparing all the recipes with my personal years of experience.

My problem comes when I want to make something I've never ever tackled before. A prime example was the fairly recent time I tackled Tiramisu which was a dessert I'd never made before. Egad, there are all sorts of variations on the 'Net--ones that are purported to be bona fide Italian versions (all of which are slightly different, by the way) versus variations that claim to be much better (tweaked versions from the true Italian ones) versus a recipe from Cooking Light magazine.

Had the Cooking Light magazine recipe NOT been posted here by charlie (whom I have learned to trust implicitly), I probably never would have selected that particular recipe. The other push was that charlie's Cooking LIght magazine post used nothing but egg whites instead of the usual yolks for the Tiramisu pastry cream, and I had a huge stockpile of frozen eggs whites I wanted to use up.

You have no idea how I kept thinking the directions for whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks in charlie's recipe which called for beating them in a double boiler after adding a bunch of hot water and sugar to the concoction would EVER produce stiffly beaten egg whites! It was so very runny for several, several minutes.

As I whipped the runny glob with my hand mixer I kept repeating the mantra, "I trust charlie; he wouldn't steer me/us wrong at finerkitchens!" and eureka, at length the whites finally did whip up to stiff peaks, and my Tiramisu came out EXCELLENT. (Of course, as I mentioned in my review on this site, I switched out the Cooking LIght magazine recipe's low-fat ingredients to full-fat because I wanted to make SURE there was good flavor, and that worked like a charm.

But I had nightmares that I would end up with 8 recipes of runny tiramisu for 72 people that was a royal mess!

In a nutshell, I feel your pain and sure hope you can salvage something from your recent duck fiasco. Let us know how you come out with it. Good luck!

 
Don't know if you noticed or not, but scrolling down through the comments to the bottom...

...I found one from Sally/BR, our buddy from Gail's Swap.

Michael

 
It's about responsibility, isn't it?

I believe that caveat applies well beyond food and at an increasing rate. It seems that responsibility is out the window.

Also beware, admin people who can't think creatively, can't predict, can't follow up because they've never heard of the need for it from other useless admin people and make mistakes that affect our lives.

It worries me that it is youth and they way they are schooled. I'm wondering how young and inexperienced this person is.

I did find it encouraging, however, that some people wrote in to express their reservations.

ooooh I am sounding so old and grumpy.

I have friends who have no background in construction who will recommend the people who are currently working on their homes, solely because they hired them. How responsible is that? ANd what did they say to those folks when the workers left a disaster once the job was finished??!!

I guess all I needed to say is that our culture is changing and this example that deals with food is one that applies somewhat universally.

amen Now go to bed you old twit.

 
I will be the Devil's Advocate. Here's how their post starts:

"We’d never cooked a duck before, and thought it might be fun to try. Pete suggested that we roast the bird in our Römertopf clay baker, and it worked brilliantly!"

Well, I have only made duck ONCE in my life and that was to thank Bachelor Bob, our FL neighbor, for doing some computer work for us. He loved duck. Duck scared me. I'd only tasted it once in my life and that was duck a l'orange in my 20s at a French restaurant in Pittsburgh. I was not impressed.

I started with a frozen carcass and remember removing the oil as it roasted because that step was the scary bit of duck lore I focused on. Everyone points out how much grease comes out of it. Why, I always wondered, do people still eat this stuff?

But to my utter surprise, the meat wasn't greasy at all. Honestly, shock was my first reaction, closely followed by "hey, this isn't a complete fiasco!"

So this is where I am aligning myself with the posters. I don't cook meat that often so my Confidence Level there is LOW, I had never made duck before (CL scraping the floor) and yet it didn't turn out bad. That was a solid win for me.

PS: Sadly, I wasn't smart enough to save all that grease. Only after paying $8 for a 4 oz container of Duck Fat at a gourmet deli years later did I realize how stupid I was.

PPS: I've still never made duck again but had duck confit at a tiny cafe in Madrid on the Turquoise Trail from Albuquerque to Santa Fe 10 years ago. A female chef had left NYC and moved to the mountains and God Bless Her for that confit. It was the highlight of my entire visit back to ABQ.

 
Not one review in comments and it sounds like an ad for R

I’ve had one of these since the 70’s and have no idea why I still have it. I keep thinking I should try it for bread, but my mom’s cast iron Dutch oven works great, so why mess with it?

I made chicken in it back in the day, I think once. I used it once. It came out slimy. Too juicy. No likely.

 
LOL. I am having a ball here...

I had duck fat from that fiasco and fried so many of Julia's "Pommes de terre sautées".

If ever there was a recipe for something you thought you didn't need one for, this is it. It is off the chart.

Then, I pulled out a plug of beef fat and now we're wallowing in real beef tallow cooked potatoes.

Oink.

 
BEWARE!!!

I tried a bread recipe and the crust was permanently stuck to the topf.

It is great for shoving meat and veg in the oven for a couple hours. But after this, I'm having no success.

 
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