How many production processes does a Peking duck have to go through before it is served?
The "Beijing Roast Duck Technical Specification" recently released by the Beijing Cuisine Association gives the answer. This technical specification includes the Beijing Cuisine Association group standard "Beijing Cuisine Traditional Hanging Oven Roast Duck Cooking Technical Specification" and "Beijing Cuisine Traditional Oven Roast Duck Cooking Technical Specification". The first thing to note is that not all ducks can be made into "Peking duck". The standard clearly stipulates that whether it is roast duck in the hanging oven or roast duck in the oven, it must be filled with Beijing duck as raw material. Ducks weigh between 2.5 and 3 kg. At the same time, the standard requires these ducks as the main ingredient to meet these conditions - plump feet, no broken skin, no bruising, ruddy palms, well-proportioned body, round waist, milky white skin, dry surface, no duck feathers. Choosing a duck is only the first step. You also have to prepare a set of cooking utensils from blank making to baking to filming. Among them, the special tools for billet making include billet making workbench, case board, shabu-shabu basin, hot pot, sugar color basin, water scoop, duck hook, oil-free pump, scissors, intestine breaker, duck brace, duck blocking, baking tools include oven, duck picker, fire scissors, fire hook, and sheet tools include slice duck plate, slice duck board, slice duck knife.
Next, it's time to start making billets. Simply put, the duck is handled before roasting. You need to give the duck a paw, take the duck tongue, inflate, open the knife, break the rectum, dig the chest, support, remove the duck arm, wash the chest, hook, iron the billet, hang the sugar color, and finally put it in the cold storage, and then take out the drying blank to enter the next link. And every process here is clearly stipulated in the standard. For example, to take the duck tongue, you need to cut the knife wound of about 1 cm with a sharp knife in the throat of the duck, and then cut off the esophagus and trachea to remove the complete duck tongue; to open the knife, you must hold the knife at 1-1.5 cm on the lower side of the right wing of the duck, the knife is 3-4 cm long, crescent-shaped; the broken rectum requires you to use your hand - hold the duck arm, insert the index finger into the anus for about 3-4 cm, penetrate the rectum, pull off and hook the rectum to the outside of the body.
The treated ducks are also placed in a cold storage and frozen at -18 °C. After freezing, the duck blanks should be removed from the cold storage and placed in an environment of 15-23 ° C and a humidity of less than 30% for 8-12 hours. In the end, the dried duck blank should be intact in shape, the surface of the duck breast is dry, no return oil, slightly waxy yellow, with obvious reticulated lines and no odor.
The duck blanks are formed and are roasted below. At this step, the cooking method of hanging oven roast duck and oven roast duck appears significantly different. Roast duck in a hanging oven requires fruit wood as fuel and is roasted over an open flame in a special oven, while roast duck in a special oven is roasted in a special oven with full premix flameless combustion technology. Let's start with roast duck in the oven. The fuel can be used in natural gas, which is heated by full premixed flameless combustion technology and baked for 50-60 minutes. Once baked, it moves on to the production process.