Cooking. whole birds.

FREAKING SUCKS.

Tom talked me in to trying to cook a duck for our belated Thanksgiving. I was skeptical. Tom has told me that even restaurants don't always cook them right. Y'know, places where people are PAID TO COOK THINGS RIGHT.

So not a good sign.

I was feeling a little better - just about everything else is ready, the other two things will take about ten minutes, just before eating.

But the duck was still pretty solidly frozen in the fridge. So I plunked it into a cold water bath. After an hour or two, it felt pretty thawed, and it was getting close to 3, when I wanted it in the oven.

So I take it out of the water, and out of the plastic, and try to wrestle the sauce packet out of "the cavity".

It was still a little frozen inside. At which point, I remembered there were "giblets" I was going to have to deal with.

I looked inside the cavity.

There was no happy little plastic package of giblets. Just a lot of icey red stuff clinging to the inside.

OH GOD.

Therein followed a lot of angry prying at things with a knife, and trying desperately to mentally use nice, unemotional terms like "giblets" and "cavity", instead of letting my brain try to help by imagining a duck, and where its various bits might be located.

There was a bit of feather quill stuck in what I soon realized was the thing's tail.

OH. GOD.

After a little while in the oven, I hauled it out again, and managed to remove what I hope is all the rest of the giblets. There were a lot of them. I have no idea if they're all out or not. The lovely little (non-photo) illustration in my Good Housekeeping book showed everything coming out in oooone niiiice eeeeasy little bundle.

Yeah, not so much.

At this point, I do not care how the duck tastes. I will slather it in orange sauce, and if that is insufficient, I will slather it in the packet of pre-made orange sauce too. All I care, is that MY HANDS WILL NEVER FEEL CLEAN AGAIN.

And that Tom take out the now-giblet-filled garbage today. ick ick ick.

Labels: cooking