- Hey y'all do you like beer?
- Do you like duck?
- Did you know you can put beer into a duck
and then put it on a barbecue
and have beer can duck?
We didn't know it, but we're gonna try it today.
Let's do this!
Prime Time baby.
- We're back.
(upbeat music)
- We've had beer can chicken.
You've made it a lot.
- Sure I have.
- I've eaten it a bunch.
We've never done beer can duck though.
And today we're gonna try and figure it out.
- Our crew is safe.
Ben and I have seen way too much of each other.
over the past six months, we are going to remove our masks.
Is that okay with you?
- That's okay with me.
And there's no one else here.
- Be responsible.
- Oh, that's what you look like.
- That was just mean.
- Beer can chicken, super duper delicious.
However, the only downside is that the skin on the chicken
doesn't get super duper crispy.
We want crispy skin.
- We do.
- We're thinking we can do a beer can duck
which has thicker skin
and actually get really crispy, perfectly cooked duck.
I've never done this before.
Have you done this before?
- Never done it.
- Kenji Lopez-Alt has done it.
- Sorry Kenji.
- We're here to live and learn man,
We're here to live and learn.
So in a previous episode of Decoy,
chef Joe Ng showed us how to make Peking duck.
Part of that technique is separating the skin
to get it crispy.
I don't think anyone would argue
that you can find a crispier skin than Peking duck,
you can't.
That said we are not making Peking duck,
but as you can only get the crispy skin
using certain techniques,
we're gonna try those out and apply them
to see if they also work on a beer can duck recipe.
- So in order to do this properly
we need to go back in time.
- Okay, here we are.
I don't know what that was but it happened.
- 24 hours from now.
- [Ben] Yes.
- We're gonna need to cook a duck.
- So now we're gonna do the things for tomorrow,
but do them today.
- All right so what we're about to do
is try to separate the skin from the meat.
We learned how to do this from chef Joe
using an air compressor.
We got a bike pump.
The air pump alone is not gonna work.
- Right.
- We have two large holes.
- We're not going to seal off the backend
because we're putting a beer can in there.
So we have air coming out of there.
Second, we don't have the full neck.
So there's a lot of air pockets on the front.
I think we could use the knife though
at the same time, like you can kind of clear a path
with your hand and you can kind of feel
where your sticking points are.
- So let's just try a paring knife
to see whether at all we can open this.
Can I try to pump it again?
- Let's go for it.
- I think we did-
- Do I feel like we did actually,
that actually worked.
We separated the fat from the meat.
We're gonna head over to our giant steam kettle.
We'll dip them in water.
That'll tighten the skin back up.
Then we're gonna give them a quick vinegar
and sugar bath, hang them
and forget about them until tomorrow.
So as you can see, we've let the ducks hang out
for 24 hours, they hung for another 24 hours
and you can see the skin looks like we never touched it
but it is actually still separated, is just got tighter.
So how do we want to season these guys?
- I think just salt.
We'll see whether that works to just caramelize the skin.
And then we'll also pick two different beers
to see if there's a difference
between a light beer and a dark beer.
Going inside, going in.
Ooh wow.
- Oh boy, I got a lot of salt in that neck.
- [Brent] Salty neck.
- I feel pretty good about that.
Good amount of salt in there.
- Yeah, and I think the only other thing
we need to do is just trim up the tail here
in order for it to actually sit upright.
Our legs will help us balance,
but we got a little too much tail.
- Cool.
- Going on there.
- Great, you wanna take off the neck fat on that one?
- Let's take the neck fat off on this one.
There's a little hole right here.
That way we will see whether there's a difference
in all of this excess fat.
- [Ben] Cool.
So that one will have an opening
for the steam to come out.
- [Brent] Great, looking good.
- [Ben] And then this guy will just take the tail off.
We'll leave the neck fat folded over
to hold the steam inside.
- Cool. - Cool.
- [Brent] All right, looks great.
- [Ben] All right, two ducks slightly different
to see how they'll steam as well.
- Beer time!
- Beer time.
- I'd like to do like a nice quality crisp light beer.
And then I think we should see if there's a difference
with like a more aggressive, heavy, hazy-
- IPA. - IPA.
Bruh.
- Okay, hazy IPA boy, crispy boy.
- Crispy boys.
Racing to the back.
So what we have here is the classic Weber grill,
only we've got a duck, ducks are bigger.
All right so we're gonna have to modify things
a little bit here.
So we're gonna build a fire put our coals
underneath the cole grate
and put our ducks on the coal grate itself.
- We have to drink a little bit of them
is the way this goes.
- Superstition, bad luck if you don't.
- Yeah, cheers.
- [Brent] We have the neck that we trimmed off
going onto the Pilsner.
Ooh buddy.
All right so we're all set up here.
We have our coals offset to one side.
The whole idea is that they're just gonna radiate heat
and that the grill itself will stay at about 275, 300.
And take our time, it's gonna take about two hours.
The whole idea is that they're standing up.
So they're gonna cook really evenly.
And a lot of that fat is going to drip off
so that we get crispy skin.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- [Brent] Cross them fingers.
- All right, now remember how you bought all those beers
because you just had to put one inside of a duck.
You have two hours to kill.
So see you later.
- So we're about halfway through, it's been an hour.
We're gonna check on our ducks
and see if they need to be turned at all
to cook a bit more evenly.
- Oh!.
- [Ben] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- [Brent] This looks fantastic.
Okay, so we're browning on the backside.
It looks really nice.
- Great turn, great turn. - Oh yeah.
This is going great.
- Anything that isn't a raging fire, thumbs up.
- All right.
- All right, back to your beer.
- See you in an hour.
- Okay, the ducks are just about done.
(whistles)
- Skin looks great, color is beautiful.
I mean, it looks gorgeous.
I'm very, very excited about this.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- [Brent] So we're gonna wanna take them off,
let it rest for about 10 to 15 minutes or so.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Duck time, the tasting.
- Let's cut this first.
I think this one actually retained a little bit more fat.
It's like still-
- This guy's still-
- Still rendering
- Yeah still rendering.
So I think this one we should slice slice first.
- It sounds great. - Cool.
It looks great.
I'm very excited about this skin.
Cooked all the way through.
This is actually significantly different
and way more exciting than a beer can chicken.
Because the whole thing about the chicken
is the skin dries out and it becomes really difficult
to actually carve this all stayed,
actually stayed together despite us separating
the whole thing.
It looks really good.
(upbeat music)
- Really like great flavor.
- It isn't crispy but it is rendered.
I dunno, it's like its own thing.
I've never had this before.
Yeah, I gotta say this is intensely delicious
but not super crispy.
- Yeah.
- So while all of the skin is like really nicely rendered
let's try some of the the backside
seem to like caramelized really quickly.
- Okay, there we go.
That's crispy skin.
- Yeah, the thigh that we had from the less cooked side
and then eating the like much more like mahogany color side
the difference in flavor and texture
was pretty sizable. - World of difference.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- That was like decadent thanksgiving turkey.
- Yeah. - On steroids.
- Yeah. - Delicious.
Let's try this one with the IPA.
I mean, let's see whether the beer has any difference
and we have all of that neck skin is totally different.
- [Ben] Yeah.
So you can feel like some pushback
in some like crisp from the skin when you're cutting it.
- [Brent] Sure.
- I don't know if it tastes like an IPA,
but it tastes I like a lot.
- But it tastes like amazing duck.
- [Ben] Yeah, it tastes really, really good.
- I do got to say I've cooked plenty of beer can chickens
on a can of Budweiser and at the end you taste Budweiser.
This is way more smooth,
the fact that you're like not tasting the beer
I think is actually a nice thing
cause you wouldn't want that in the actual cook.
I think we're getting somewhere
that actually we should rather than going slower, lower,
actually go a little hotter faster
in order to get more caramelization,
get more color to actually char it
a little bit on the outside.
I do think that separating the skin had a remarkable effect,
like it rendered a lot of the fat.
- Yes.
- The presentation is absolutely fantastic.
- [Ben] Looks beautiful.
- It's not the level of crisp that we were hoping for,
but ultimately I think that's okay.
Like I think the next version
would actually probably be better.
We just have a slightly different approach.
- Yeah, I think it would just be a little bit higher heat
and less cook time, which who's gonna argue with that.
- [Brent] Right.
- You're gonna end up with a crispier skin
and just as great of a flavor.
Like this is a phenomenal flavor
and I think you're kind of good to go.
- Right, also I don't think,
I don't know, what do you think about
keeping the neck skin on?
- I think that might be part of where like this
like the kind of like real nice like delicateness
of the meat and the texture might be coming-
- Cooked a little bit more evenly.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- That's the only way I can describe it.
There were two birds of the same size
sitting right next to each other.
- Right.
- That one shrunk a lot more.
This one stayed a little bit bigger.
- Right.
- I think this cap really, really did help
keep a lot of the flavor in.
- This is like kind of a real fricking
whole animal experience though.
Like the breast is different from the legs
different from the neck, it's different from the wing
like depending on your preference,
there's like a bite from everyone.
Also might wanna mention that one duck
can probably pretty easily feed four people.
- Very easily. - I've had three bites and-
- [Ben] I'm going to bed.
- Yeah, this is super, super decadent.
- I love chicken, I love duck.
I love beer can chicken.
I really love beer can duck.
Can't lose.
(upbeat music)
- And that's how you get into art school.