BBQ Smoked Duck Legs Confit Style Recipe

BBQ Smoked Duck Legs Confit Style Recipe

BBQ Smoked Duck Legs  Confit Style Recipe | How to smoke duck legs in ceramic egg BBQ or offset smoker for beautifully tender & crispy skin cured or fresh duck legs with confit texture 

In preparation for a BBQ this weekend, I saw my local supermarket had some duck legs on sale, so I picked up 4 duck legs to give it a little experimental BBQ. My objective being to compare the difference between salt cured and 'fresh' duck legs in the ceramic egg smoker - both in terms of taste and texture.

For the first pair of duck legs going into the BBQ, I cured the legs in a mix of:

Salt

Pepper

Orange zest

Garlic

Bay leaves

Juniper berries

Chinese five spice

The duck legs were cured in the fridge for 12hrs (I don't recommend as long as 24hrs as suggested by some, as the resulting duck legs can become rather salty - though I do use quite a bit of salt in the cure). The curing process is for seasoning and, more importantly to me, to help tenderise the meat before it goes through the BBQing processes.

The other pair of duck legs were given a light BBQ rub 1hr before being put into the BBQ (the legs to the left).

Yes, that is a whole pork butt I've thrown into into the smoker / BBQ as well, as I didn't want to be wasting charcoal. What you will notice is the tray underneath where instead of a standard water pan, I made a vegetable trivet to capture the duck fat and juice drippings with:

Dripping Pan Ingredients 

Carrots

Onion

Celery

Parsley

Garlic

White wine

During the course of the BBQ smoking session, these vegetables were rendered down with the fats to form a fantastic duck & pork stock. You will need to keep it topped up with a little water during the cooking process to make sure it doesn't burn but it adds fragrance to the moisture created in the air inside the smoker BBQ, so another layer of flavour.

The BBQ smoking process itself for confit-style BBQ duck legs ...

Using a smoker BBQ at 225f infuses fantastic colour and flavour to the duck legs and is akin to the low temperature confit cooking process. However, because we are using air rather than a liquid for a heat transfer, achieving the crispy skin with succulent duck flesh is slightly more difficult / requires more steps.

1. Cure the duck legs, if desired (it's recommended, as the duck legs are more tender - I've tested & can confirm salt cured to be superior method for texture and taste). Make sure you wash off the cure & dry before put into into BBQ smoker.
2. Bring BBQ smoker or ceramic egg BBQ up to temp of 225f (so, classic brisket cooking temp that takes longer but give better smoke penetration as meat has longer time at lower temp)
3. BBQ / smoke the duck legs for around 2-3 hrs till the internal temperature hits 170f
4. Take out of smoker and put into oven set at 250f and cook for further 2hrs till skin is crispy

Whilst the 'common' understanding is that 170f is the internal target temperature for duck legs, I found this to be completely off the mark with the duck leg being tough, completely different to the soft texture of confit duck leg with crispy outer skin and meat that falls off the bone. The additional 2hrs cooking in the oven resulted in a completely different duck product (I did also try after 1hr of cooking and whilst it was closer to confit duck, it wasn't tender enough, so hold steady through the process).

The cured duck legs are definitely a superior product to the BBQ rub duck legs, with a tenderness that goes all the way through to the bone. It was possible to see the different between the salt cured vs rub 

Once your BBQ smoked & oven confit duck legs are complete, they are a versatile product that can be easily chilled down and reheated with no detriment to the texture & moisture of the meat (unlike BBQ brisket) or the duck legs can be easily broken down / shredded cold for using in salads, sandwiches or wraps.