Duck Breast with Balsamic Cherry Sauce
Warning! Duck breast with cherry sauce can become your newest addictive recipe. This succulent, well-cooked duck breast will impress everyone! The trick is in the trimming and the scoring of the duck breast and then perfectly crispy skin.
Don’t wait until a special occasion to make this dish! It is so good you will make a midweek dinner into a celebration. The dish works well with fresh cherries, but when out of season, frozen cherries are also good.
The aromatic blend of 5 different peppers is the perfect seasoning for duck. You can make the seasoning yourself by choosing your own selection of pepper from black, white, pink, green, allspice, Szechuan, long pepper, Kampot pepper… the list is long.
The balsamic in the cherry sauce creates the right flavour balance and adds a little zing to it.
Best side dishes for duck breast
Another important part of this recipe is choosing the correct side dish. Mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, mashed celeriac or any cabbage will work well with duck.
In this recipe we use a few culinary terms. Guess we had a French day or is it the recipe that tends towards speaking more French? Don’t worry, we have prepared an overview and listed the most important culinary terms.
Duck Breast with Balsamic Cherry Sauce
EQUIPMENT (click pictures for details)
Ingredients
- 1 pc trimmed and scored duck breast (400-450 gr)
- 200 gr cherries
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 120 ml veal stock (or demi-glace)
- 1 pc cinnamon stick
- 1 tsp crushed peppercorn mix
- 1-2 tsp light brown sugar or cassonade (optional)
- 10 gr cold butter
Instructions
- Wash the cherries and remove the stones or use frozen cherries.
Prepare the duck
- Season the duck breast with fleur de sel and the crushed peppercorn mix.
- Place the duck breast, skin side down, in a sauté pan over a medium low heat without any oil or butter and cook for 6-8 minutes until the skin renders the fat and becomes golden brown and crisp.
- Turn the duck breast over, reduce the heat to low and cook for another 4 minutes. Use a spoon to baste the duck skin with the rendered fat.
- Place the duck breast onto a wire rack and cover with foil to rest for 10 minutes.
- Discard the duck fat from the pan, add the fresh cherries and sauté for a minute.
- Add the balsamic vinegar and the sugar (if the cherries are too sour to your taste), cinnamon stick, a pinch of the peppercorn mix and the demi-glace. Increase the heat and cook to reduce the sauce for 3 minutes.
- Stir in the knob of cold butter and season the sauce to taste.
Plating
- Cut the duck magret in half and place on the plate with a pinch of fleur de sel and peppercorn mix on top. Generously spoon the cherry sauce around the duck magret. Add a vegetable garnish of your liking.
Notes
- “Demi-glace” is a French word for a sauce made from reduced veal or beef stock with a rich flavour of bone marrow. It has a sticky consistency and texture, and brown and shiny colour.
- Basting or “Arroser ” is cooking meat with either its own juice or any type of marinade or sauce. This technique is commonly used to keep the meat moist during the cooking process and to make the outside crisp and shiny.