- [Brian] There you go.
- Yeah, keep it.
- [Brian] But don't be scared of it.
- Yeah, just- - Arg!
(Nyesha laughs)
- [Brian] Let it rip.
- We're at Mister Jiu's,
and we're making Peking style duck.
(upbeat music)
(cleaver thuds)
Oh my gosh.
Do you know how long I've been waiting
to try your duck, chef?
(Brandon laughs)
(upbeat music)
So what is this machine?
This is a... - This is a air compressor.
- Air compressor? - Yeah.
- And where do we place the air compressor?
- We put it underneath the skin,
inside the cavity here.
And I'm holding the neck. - Yes.
- Just so the air wants to go out that way.
- [Nyesha] Wow.
- In the very beginning we used a bike pump
that, the...
(Brandon laughs) - Oh my gosh.
- That ended pretty quickly.
- Sure.
- When we started doing a lot.
We get these, ducks head on, feet on,
everything is like, completely whole.
And that allows us to use the air compressor
to separate the skin from the meat.
- I feel like I should do the whole thing.
Come on little ducky.
All right chef. - Yeah.
Just right under there.
- Okay. - Exactly.
- [Brian] Got it good, there you go.
Can you see how the back?
And you can tell it's getting all the way down.
And, and when we carve it too, we want all the skin.
So now I flip it over.
- I've eaten a lot of Peking duck,
but I actually haven't made it.
And so to see the process break down,
I think that you really have to approach this
with intention because every duck is different.
Like, some of it has more connective tissue
and some don't, so really feeling around.
I keep thinking about like, a balloon,
like just like giving someone a duck balloon
for their birthday.
(Nyesha laughs)
So morbid.
- After the air compression happened,
we'll take off the feet and we'll take off the wings.
One of the differences of what we're, the result
that we're like, looking for,
we're trying to get this duck to be medium.
The meat should also be enjoyed as much as the skin,
but the meat sometimes came at a sacrifice of the skin.
If you get the breast to be medium,
then the thighs, if they have the bone in it still,
it doesn't cook all the way.
So now we're gonna take out the thigh bone.
- Okay.
- Like the leg will be fully cooked
and the, and the breasts will be medium.
- [Nyesha] Wow.
- But we're going inside the cavity
and just popping this, this thigh bone out.
So when we blanch it...
- Yeah.
- We don't want the inside to get blanched.
- Okay.
- If any water gets inside of the cavity,
you've just expanded the skin away from the meat.
- Yes.
- So you want the skin to stay crispy and dry out.
- Yes.
- And skewer one side through
so it creates tension in the gap.
Fold it over.
Go one back through, go over and then in.
So you can tell that it's a full cinch
cuz you'll see air as it's bubbled up.
You know, like it'll pocket a little bit.
- [Nyesha] I'm gonna cinch the (beep)
outta this duck actually.
(Nyesha laughs)
- Now that they're gotten to this point,
we're gonna blanche them.
- Yes.
- The water is a mixture of vinegar, salt, licorice,
and black cardamon. Star anise.
It's just like one more layer
of like getting a little bit more seasoning in it.
- Absolutely.
- And we don't really want the neck to get any
of the water in it,
or else the water will go into the actual meat itself.
- Okay.
- While it's in here, I'll kind of just baste this.
- Wow, you can see it sort of tighten up already.
- Yeah.
- It's kind of like almost like going to the spa.
When you go to the spa, you're like open up all your pores
and so when your skin kind of retracts again.
- [Nyesha] Yeah.
- It has all that stuff inside of it.
It feels all good and tight and like, yeah, right?
(Nyesha laughing)
Like even this restaurant for me
is the nostalgia that I knew my grandparents
and parents had for certain dishes.
What I've learned from being here, too,
about this neighborhood has been like super inspiring
for me and there's been just a ton of perseverance
in this community to keep this identity.
All these little pores have come up.
The next kind of work we need to do is,
is actually pluck all of these excess hairs out of it.
But yeah, essentially we're just kind of going through
and just kind of making sure all of these feathers are out.
- Okay.
- These are all the ducks that have been blanched.
Um, we do this process two times a week.
- Wow. This entire process?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
- And we're getting a range
of around 30 to 40 ducks each day.
- Chop some duck necks.
- Yeah.
- Some heads.
Heads are gonna roll.
- Chopping heads.
But now you'll see like...
- [Brian] You still got all your fingers, right?
- I, uh, yes.
- That's the most important thing.
- Most important.
75 more ducks to go.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You can see what Brian's doing next.
We're tying the cavity,
so when it ages that it's not exposed to air.
Now that, the all the pores are open.
- Yes.
- Now we're gonna introduce all the things
that are gonna be inside the skin that we want to stay.
- Lovely.
- Traditionally it's maltose.
- Okay. What is maltose?
- Maltose is basically unsweet sugar.
What you get from it is all the caramelization properties
that you would get from sugar...
- Yes.
- without it being sweet.
We're adding dark soy.
Also another layer of what we call duck spice...
- Anise like.
- Anise like. Warm spice, which all that stuff.
- So what we usually do is this is just a spoonful on top.
- Okay.
- Spoonful on bottom.
We want it thin enough to where we can get
like an even spread on it.
- Nyesha'll help you too.
- Yeah?
Okay,let's go.
- Got you.
- So I'm just gonna go straight across like this.
One spoonful like that.
And again, if it sits too long, like it'll thicken up.
So we kind of want to move quick.
- [Nyesha] This is like the facial portion
when their pores are open.
- [Brandon] Yes, exactly.
This is a massage portion.
- [Cindy] Yeah.
- These ducks are getting pampered.
- Serious.
You just want to get that, yeah, nice even coat.
- Lucky ducks.
- Yeah. And a lot of times like they would have a big pot
of the maltose and they would, same thing,
like they would be doing this process still,
but they would just be dunking
pretty much the whole duck in it.
When you have a, a production of that size,
just doing that, it's like,
it makes sense for you to have like that kind of...
- [Nyesha] Larger pot.
- [Brandon] pot that you just...
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- [Brandon] boop boop boop.
This is how we kind of get the amount
of season that we want on display.
- [Nyesha] So after this process. Aging?
- [Brandon] Aging. - [Nyesha] Okay.
- [Brandon] Aging begins. - [Nyesha] Okay.
- All right. So now we're gonna take these upstairs.
- Cool.
- We have a walk-in upstairs where we're kind
of in a rotation of ducks there.
- Awesome.
Field trip.
- Yeah.
Here's our little duck cart.
Okay, so this is Zach.
He is our duck rotation ager...
- Wow. - Extraordinaire.
- What a title.
- I spend a couple hours a week
just
in the whirling cold wind,
moving all the ducks,
making sure they're dry,
getting them ready for service.
So we use chopsticks to spread their arms
so that this dries fully.
You don't get any mold.
- [Brandon] That crispiness of skin
on that back gets drier too.
So all of this becomes
like a nice like square piece of skin.
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- [Zach] And our last step is just driving these hangers
through the skin around the neck bone.
This is why we did all of that work
to tighten up this cavity
so it'll hang properly and dries better
and is more crispy.
These, uh, are the ducks at the end of the drying process.
They've been in for two weeks.
Their skin's nice and tight.
The glaze is really stuck
and now they're ready to be smoked up and cooked.
So I'll keep bringing these
down until we have enough for service today.
With the empty space that we've made in the walk-in,
we'll just keep repeating this process every two days.
So we always have a fresh supply
of nicely aged ducks ready to go.
- Okay. Good night little babies.
- [Brandon] Good night.
- Okay.
- Wow, what a journey we've just been on.
(Brandon laughing)
- Geez. - Yeah.
- So these are service ducks?
- So these are service ducks.
- Okay.
So today we are in preparation for the service.
- Yes.
- We're gonna get these in this, in to smoke.
- So this, these wood chips are gonna kind of
give it some smokey flavor.
- We're not really looking to do a smoked duck.
What we're looking to actually get is the skin to
be really crispy and to, to be multi-layered
and dimensional in flavor.
But having it be too smoky,
I thought made it less like Peking duck.
We just like close it all up,
and we just let these smoke for 30 minutes.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- So these are the pancakes.
We kind of do them mostly traditional
in a sense of they get stacked on top
of each other and then cooked.
And we used to do this by hand and then I found
this like amazing machine that like just does it for us.
This is like one of the secrets.
- So is this the final stage of cooking or does it get...
- This is what we do in the morning.
And then when we get an order,
we'll portion them and and then steam them so they're hot.
And then we send it to the table that way.
It's a labor of love. Like you'll see...
- [Nyesha] Of course. - it takes a lot of people
to do this technique. Um, in this amount already.
- Dope!
- So these have been smoking for about 30 minutes now.
- Okay.
- Now we're basically ready to take 'em out.
They've taken on some color,
they've taken on basically like
that other layer of, of, of flavor.
- Yes.
- And from this point on, um,
this time of the day,
we'll, we'll start to let them basically temper.
These will be ready to roast when someone orders them.
When an order comes in...
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- We'll get this on a tray.
It's gonna go through two cycles of heat.
It's 17 minutes at 350 and 6 minutes at 450.
So it kind of cooks almost for, you know, almost 30 minutes.
- Okay.
- And then we let it rest for 20 minutes,
and then we're ready to carve.
- [Nyesha] Wow.
- Yeah.
- We have arrived.
We have celebrated every single step of this duck's life.
I mean we've given it a, a bath, tons of flavor layering.
It's had two weeks to rest. I mean...
- It's like a Kobe steak, like it got...
- A hundred percent.
- you know, like it got massaged.
- A hundred percent.
I went to the spa.
- Yeah.
- Totally.
- We'll get it to the table in an hour.
When we're about to slice,
we'll call for the rest of the kitchen.
- (indistinct) your stations.
- Slicing duck!
- Right.
- Garrma jay will get all of the little garnishes together.
Cilantro just picked. Squash.
A little bit of cucumbers, lightly dressed.
Just a little salt, a little bit of like rice vinegar.
- Um, so fresh.
- The duck is rich, so like... - Totally.
- having some, some acidity there helps with the richness.
And so this will come with the duck at the table,
and this is everything you need to kind of set it up.
Now that this is kind of resting,
the work that we did to get this splayed out
like this and like the rubbing on this backside,
like this is, this is like the result.
Like you get this like shatter, right?
At this point,
we take this off and get this little puppy ready to slice.
Usually I come across.
Well you kind of like, we're shooting
for like mediums to where, like,
you know, I think it's fully,
it's still pink all the way through. It's beautiful.
- It's literally perfect.
Like I'm so freaking impressed.
This technique is incredible.
I prefer duck, um, towards that temp for me.
- Me,too.
- You know, there's, it's not as chewy almost.
- Yeah.
- Um, so sort of finishing
with a bit of Maldon sea salt or, or...
- Yeah, because you know the inside has not
gotten any seasoning right here.
- Sure.
- That's kind of where it needs the most, like, salt.
- Yes.
- This piece I think is actually my favorite piece.
It's something different than ours too
is that we kind of, when we are slicing this,
we're keeping the skin and the meat kind of, um, together.
Traditional places would remove the skin.
- Yes.
Underneath, you know, and present it all like that.
Which is like, awesome way to do it too.
So this is kind of usually how we present it.
Like the legs like this.
- Okay.
- We'll kind of put down - Tenderloin.
- The little tenderloin. - Yeah. It's incredible.
- So excited. Thanks Chef.
Moisture retention, beautiful.
Rose, cooked through.
Beautiful.
- Give this guy another, like, layer of salt.
These are the, the hearts and the gizzards.
Just a little like chrysanthemum that we use.
- Oh my gosh. I love chrysanthemum.
- Yeah. All right, here it is.
- Oh my goodness.
- This is our whole duck.
- Aaahhh!
- You know when we bring it to the table,
you would get your whole duck,
your pancakes, your garnishes.
It's all there.
- Beautiful. This and a few of your closest friends.
I mean really. What more can you want?
Uh, it's so incredible.
Like, I have followed you on social media
for so long and it's an honor, like truly.
- It's great to have you here.
- Oh, it's incredible.
Thank you.
(Brandon laughing)
- I'm gonna cry.
- Like I think there was something about like,
just like coming to Chinatown,
having roast duck, that I felt like
that was part of some of the tradition that I wanted
to continue here is fulfilling that like combination.
- Literally misty-eyed.
- It's like...
- Yeah, you are for sure.
- I am because it's like, ugh.
It's like all of that love, the passion,
the care that went into the entire process resonates.
And I always say like, food is such an energy transfer.
So hearing your story, the energy in the,
in the kitchen, it's all just like hitting me,
and it's just incredible.
Incredible.
- Thanks.
- Yeah.