Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Pressure cooker duck legs in Hoisin sauce

This is what I like to call a 'fridge tea'.  It's the end of the month, I have run out of money and food supplies are low.  So, I have to be a bit creative with whatever ingredients I happen to have left.

I had two duck legs and a jar of hoisin sauce.  Sounds like the basis for a Chinese style duck dish. 
I added to this:
Shallots (I had a few lurking about)
Garlic (slightly sprouty)
Ginger (I keep this in the freezer)
Red chilli (also from the freezer)
Five spice powder
Runny honey
Szechuan peppercorns
I have recently purchased a rather retro pressure cooker.  Seeing as it was a Monday night I didn't want to be cooking for hours so I thought I'd give this a whirl in the pressure cooker.

First I browned the duck legs in the pressure cooker pan with a tiny bit of sunflower oil. 
Then I added the shallots and fried them off for a couple of mins.
Then I chucked the rest of the ingredients in with a bit of water, stirred it round and cooked under pressure for 40mins.
After taking the lid off I added some frozen peas (only veg in the house!) to cook through for a couple of mins.

Served with boiled rice.

Well, I love my pressure cooker.  This was really rather tasty and required very little effort.  The meat had started to come off the bone and the sauce was lovely and thick.  I would omit the honey next time though as the Hoisin is already quite sweet and personally I don't think it needed any more.  I reckon it would have been done after 20mins but I went for 40 to make sure the duck legs were tender.

I sometimes think of duck as a bit of a treat but two duck legs are only £2.50 which results in ducky goodness!

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