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Holiday recipe: Sticky rice duck from Pagu’s Tracy Chang
Learn how to prepare this Taiwanese dish from a James Beard Award semifinalist.
As the winter holidays come closer, you may be thinking of what to serve guests at your next party. We asked Boston area chefs for their favorite holiday dishes and a recipe to share with Boston.com readers.
Tracy Chang, chef and owner of Pagu in Cambridge, offered sticky rice duck, a Taiwanese dish that she learned in part from her grandmother. According to Chang, the flavor and character of the dish make it a good addition to a festive celebration.
“It’s not something that I crave in the summertime,” she said. “It’s a very [warming dish]. I also think it’s special because you can’t really go out and buy it somewhere… It’s a homey dish, rather than a restaurant banquet dish.” While sticky rice duck does not grace the menu of many Boston area eateries, it can be ordered at Pagu from now through Lunar New Year, Chang said.
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The recipe features Jurgielewicz duck served with short grain rice, which is tossed with sausage, shallots, peas, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms. The meat is rubbed with shio koji, a flavor enhancer, giving the skin a golden color and allowing it to caramelize. Chang would enjoy eating the dish over Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and Lunar New Year celebrations. She remembers watching her grandmother, who operated two restaurants, prepare it.
“It was a really special treat,” Chang said. “A lot of my cousins would be watching TV or playing video games, and I would just go in the kitchen with her. I have these awesome memories of standing on the little stool, because I wasn’t tall enough to see. She’d give me the spatula and be like, ‘stir this, while I’m doing this.’ She’d explain everything to me and let me taste everything.”
Pagu is an eatery that was named a semifinalist in the category for outstanding restaurant by the James Beard Foundation this year. It’s a place where Chang wants visitors to feel welcome, that feels international and where a guest can overhear many different languages being spoken. Chang said that she thinks about what it means to be in the hospitality industry, and part of her work involves uplifting the immigrant community that plays an important role in it.
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“I thought about what my purpose [is] in being a restaurant owner,” Chang said. “It’s not just making food or creating great parties, a great space. I think if you look at the people who run restaurants day in and day out, it’s immigrants.” She added that understanding the personal stories of immigrants is key. “If we want the industry to improve and push forward, to be more diverse and dynamic than it has been… That’s something that we need to talk about.”
How to make sticky rice duck, according to Pagu’s Tracy Chang
Sticky rice
Ingredients
- 400 grams, short grain rice (“sweet rice”)
- 200 grams, shiitake dashi
- 80 grams, tamari
- 50 grams, Taiwanese sausage
- 50 grams, rehydrated, diced shiitake
- 50 grams, peas (frozen)
- 50 grams, diced carrots (frozen)
- 10 grams, fried shallots
- 10 grams, sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon, black pepper
Instructions
- In a large bowl, soak rice in water (enough to cover) at room temperature for 10 minutes. Strain and rinse.
- Sauté Taiwanese sausage with a splash of canola oil until golden. Set aside.
- In rice cooker, cook rice with shiitake dashi, tamari. Do not cook more than four quarts of rice at a time.
- Rice should be 80% cooked. Remove from cooker and allow to chill 10 minutes.
- Mix in all the other ingredients by hand, with gloves on. Make sure it is well mixed.
- Cool. Label, date, and refrigerate in quarts or vacuum bags.
Koji duck
Ingredients
- 1 whole Jurgielewicz duck
- 200 grams shio koji
Instructions
- Use a paring knife to trim the excess fat from both ends of the duck, as well as the skin near the cavity.
- Do not over-trim the skin by the cavity. The skin should still cover the entire duck carcass.
- Peeling the skin back, use the paring knife to gently detach the skin of the duck from the body, while maintaining it as a whole piece around the duck.
- The skin should be like a loose fitting jacket, around the duck, on both the back and front sides.
- Be careful to not puncture the skin.
- Once the skin is detached, rub shio koji on the inside of the duck, as well as on the skin.
- The shio koji will enhance the flavor of the duck, as well as help with browning in the oven.
- Rest the duck on a rack on top of a sheet tray.
- Leave it to dry in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.
- Preheat oven to 275 degrees, convection setting turned on.
- Stuff the duck cavity with 1 quart of sticky rice.
- Roast the duck on the middle rack of the oven for 30 minutes, allowing the fat to render.
- Remove the tray from the oven, and carefully pour off the excess fat from the tray.
- Return the tray and duck to the oven, and roast at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until golden and crispy.
- For medium rare, you want a temperature of 120 degrees in the duck leg.
- Note: Take into account the duck temperature rising 10 degrees after removing it from the oven.
- Allow to cool 10 minutes, before carving and removing the sticky rice with a spoon.
- Slice, serve alongside sticky rice, and enjoy with friends!
Share with us: Do you have a favorite holiday recipe? Tell us how you make it and what makes it special. Fill out the survey below or e-mail us at [email protected], and your response may be featured in a future Boston.com article.
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