My Roasted Duck Leg & sauce recipe

Crispy roasted Duck Leg with a sweet potato mash and red wine sauce, perfect for the cold winter.

Welcome to my winter meal recipes I'm sharing with you on this winter season.

Here you can find the full list of ingredients and method to making this roasted Duck Leg and sweet potato mash with a red wine duck sauce.

Serves: 2 Preparation Time: 15 Minutes Cooking Time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Ingredients

Duck Legs & veg:

Duck Legs, 2, 462g

Baby Carrots, 12

Green Beans, 22

Olive Oil, 2 tablespoons

Unsalted Butter, 1 tablespoon

Salt & Pepper to taste

Sweet potato mash:

Sweet Potatoes, 5

Milk 100ml

Salt & Pepper to taste

Red Wine sauce:

Red Wine, 2 glasses

Chicken Stock, 200ml

Olive Oil, 1 tablespoon

Honey, 1 tablespoon

Cloves, 3

Star Anise, 1

Onion, 1

Garlic Cloves, 1

Unsalted Butter, 1 tablespoon

Salt & Pepper to taste

Method

We start with pre-heating our oven to 190c/fan 170c/gas 5. Then place the 2 duck legs onto a baking tray and pat them dry with a paper towel. With a knife prick the skin of the duck legs all over the top to allow the fat to render better when in the oven. Season the 2 duck legs with salt and pepper to taste and place them in the oven at 190c/fan 170c/gas 5 for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Next up we want to make our sweet potato mash, grab 5 sweet potatoes and peel them and chop them up until smaller pieces, we then want to grab a pot and fill it up with water and add salt, place our chopped sweet potatoes into the pot of salted water and bring them to the boil. Cook until the sweet potatoes become fork tender.

Once our sweet potatoes are cooked, drain the water from the pot and begin mashing our sweet potatoes with a masher until smooth, we then want to add 100ml of milk and salt and pepper to taste, taste test the mash to make sure you get the seasoning right. And our sweet potato mash is complete, put the mash to one side and let's get working on our sauce.

We begin with chopping our onion finely diced and mincing our garlic, we then heat a pot on the hob to a medium heat adding 1 table spoon of olive oil, add our onions and add a little bit of salt, this will help draw out the moisture from the onion, once are onions are almost cooked add our minced garlic and cook until the raw smell is gone, we add our garlic later so the garlic doesn't burn.

Once our onion and garlic is cooked we add our 2 glasses of red wine, be sure to cook off the alcohol, you should know when the alcohol is evaporated when the smell of alcohol has gone. We then add 200ml of chicken stock to our sauce, add 3 cloves and 1 star anise, once the sauce comes to a boil, lower the temperature to a medium low heat to allow the sauce to simmer and reduce down. Once the sauce thickens and has reduced, add 1 tablespoon of honey, add salt and pepper to taste, then take off the heat, put the sauce through a siv to strain out the spices and onion and add unsalted butter to make our sauce glossy and extra yummy and our sauce is complete.

Once we have 30 minutes remaining until our duck legs have cooked we want to move onto our veg, start our 12 baby carrots in a pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, season with salt and pepper to taste and begin searing our carrots for the flavour, once you have a nice colour on our baby carrots put them into a oven proof dish and place them into the oven for 30 minutes, while the oven is open baste your duck legs with a spoon with all the duck fat that has rendered from the duck legs.

Now once the full 1 hour and 30 minutes has passed remove the duck legs from the oven, leave the baby carrots in the oven for their last 10 minutes and then pour the duck fat from the legs into a heat proof pot and save this fat for the best roast potatoes you've ever made for next time you make them. Place the duck legs onto a plate and allow them to rest for 10 minutes. While the duck legs are resting and our carrots are finishing in the oven for the last 10 minutes we want to heat up a pan for our green beans, add a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and add our green beans, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook until fork tender. Once the 10 minutes has passed remove the baby carrots from the oven. Take off our green beans off the hob. And reheat our sweet potato mash and our sauce. And get ready to serve!

Now the best bit, serve up your sweet potato mash onto the plates, with our baby carrots and green beans on the side, place the duck legs over the mash and finally pour over our glossy red wine sauce over the duck legs and tuck in!

Be sure to check out my other winter meals recipes, all will give you a hug this winter.

Please leave me any comments or reviews of the recipes as I would love to know how you got on and any thoughts on the dish.

Much love,

Dylan