Mexican Duck

Earlier this month I tried a new recipe featuring duck. I had found a whole duck (raised a few summers ago) in the freezer  while reorganizing it. The chest freezer, like a number of places, had gotten horribly choatic with things just being stuffed into it willy-nilly when DS1 and family were living here.  So, with my normal freezer filing system thrown out the window for a couple of years now (because digging out from all the chaos and clutter has been a long --and still ongoing-- unpleasant process for me) I had forgotten about the small duck way down in one of the bottom baskets.

I let the duck thaw in the refrigerator (about a day), then put it into the crock pot on low for 7ish hours.  It was somewhere between 2.5 and 3 pounds, and since I really don't have a recipe for cooking a whole duck in the crock pot, I just winged it (ha ha) in terms of cooking time.  When it looked like the duck was ready to fall apart--legs separating from body and breast meat trying to fall off the keel bone--I took it out of the crock pot, deboned and shredded it.

After that I loosely followed a recipe for duck tinga that I had found on the internet.

Here is what my personalized version of the recipe turned out to be:

shredded duck meat
4 smallish potatoes, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 8oz. can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 tsp oregano
2 cups water
1 avocado
sour cream
fajita size tortillas

With your hands, squeeze the water out of your shredded potatoes.  Heat a skillet on medium heat, then add oil, potatoes, onion and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes start to brown, roughly 15 minutes.

Add the oregano, duck, and adobo sauce.  Stir in the water, and let simmer until you are ready to serve dinner (can serve as soon as hot; I think mine simmered for about 45 min. waiting for DH to get home from work.)  Can simmer longer if runny, or add more water if it looks like it is getting too dry.  You want the mixture to be 'juicy' but not soupy.

Warm the tortillas (either covered in foil in 300 degree oven about 10 min, or one at a time in a hot frying pan--dry, no oil or butter--for roughly 30 seconds per side).  Remove skin and pit from avocado, and cut into thin slices.

To eat, place desired amounts of duck mixture, sour cream and avocado on a tortilla, fold and eat!

This was super spicy.  At least, I thought so, since I rarely eat anything above the level of a mild salsa.  But yet, I loved it.  Heaps of sour cream and avocado toned down the heat enough that I could eat a couple of these in a row.  DH wasn't so fond of it. In fact, he said that I didn't need to worry about making "Mexican duck" again in the future.  

Given that the only poultry currently in our freezer are chickens, turkeys and a previously forgotten goose (same year as the duck), I won't be making duck anything any time in the foreseeable future.  Wonder what kind of interesting goose recipes I can find. . .