Smoked Duck

My fiancée and I received a bunch of frozen duck products from Maple Leaf Farms in Northern Indiana. One of the things we were fortunate enough to score was a whole duck, so I finally decided to pull it out of the freezer and thawed it in the fridge for a couple of days. I loosely followed Malcom Reed's YouTube video on "How To Smoke a Whole Duck." I overnight (15+ hours) dry-brined the bird in kosher salt after scoring the flesh with my meat thermometer.

On Saturday morning, I pulled it out of the fridge and wiped it down with paper towels. I stuffed it with orange wedges and two halves of an onion and seasoned it with WING-A-LING's Duck Duck Goose dry rub. I ended up with way more leftover orange wedges than I imagined, but whatever.

While the bird came to room temp., I preheated my BGE and then brought the dome temp. to 325°F with an indirect setup, using a drip pan full of about three cups of water. I stuck my probe in one of the breasts and set my thermometer to 155°F target temp.

While waiting, I made Reed's glaze (orange juice, balsamic, molasses, honey, s&p, orange zest) and put it in the fridge. After about three and a half hours-ish, she was at 155°F internal (breast meat), so I opened the egg and brushed on the glaze. At this point, the bird was looking pretty good and smelled even better.

After adding the glaze, I let her ride for almost another 50 minutes, until the internal temp. of the breast hit 164°F.


Then, I pulled the duck off the egg and let it rest for 15 minutes on a wooden cutting board in my kitchen.

Before carving, I removed the orange wedges and onion halves. It smelled incredible and was very moist! Very much enjoyed the smoky flavor and would highly recommend this to anyone for a holiday meal, as it seemed to me like a more succulent turkey, although with much less meat.