Authentic Thai Duck Curry with Pineapple

Sawasdee ka, welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. Today, for the first time, I'm gonna share a recipe that was inspired by my dad. Now, anyone who knows my dad knows that he's a man who takes his hobbies very seriously. And several years ago, cooking was his hobby. And he wouldn't just make a dish one time, he would make a dish again and again, tweaking every detail to make sure it turned out perfectly. And today's recipe was one of his projects, which is how I became interested in the dish. Now, it is called Gang Pit Bet Yang. It's a red curry with barbecue duck. Gang Pit is red curry and Bet Yang is Chinese barbecue duck. This is an amazing curry because you take two components that are already delicious on their own and putting them together actually makes it doubly delicious. And don't worry, I am not gonna ask you to roast the duck. We are going to buy the duck. So this is actually a luxurious curry that is very easy to make. Now, if you're wondering, wait a minute, why are we putting a Chinese duck into a Thai curry? Is this a real Thai dish? Yes, it's a real Thai dish. Now, Thai cuisine, as we know it today, has a ton of Chinese influence because in Thailand, we have a huge Chinese population. Now, the Chinese influence in other dishes are not as obvious, are more subtle, but in this dish, it's just so clear that it's like a half Thai, half Chinese dish. And it is one of the greatest food combinations ever. By the way, this is one of the recipes in my book, Hot Thai Kitchen, which has just been updated and expanded for its 10th anniversary edition. And I thought that to celebrate its re-release, I would share with you one of the recipes in the original version of this book. Get started. All right, let's talk about this duck. So this is a duck that's been marinated with Chinese five-spice powder and a bunch of really flavorful seasoning and then slow-roasted until tender. You can buy these at any Asian supermarket that's got a hot food section or a lot of Chinese restaurants also have them. Now, if you're thinking, can I roast my own duck? Well, you can, but you should know that that would be like a weekend project. And if you've spent your weekend making this duck, you're probably not gonna wanna put it in a curry, okay? For this, let's just buy the duck. Step one, we're going to debone the duck. And then we're gonna take the bones and make a wonderful, flavorful duck stock and then use that duck stock in our curry. And that step is my dad's number one secret to infusing the curry broth with the wonderful flavors of the roast duck. So this is a step that's gonna make all the difference, okay? I'm gonna show you how to debone this duck. Don't be intimidated. As you'll see, it's not nearly as hard as it sounds. So I'm using a boning knife, but you don't need it. A regular chef's knife would work, but I do find that a pointy tip is important. I just like the boning knife because I find the smaller blade a little easier to maneuver. So step one, we're going to separate the skin between the leg, the drumstick, and the breast, okay? And now, oh my God, juicy. What you're gonna need to do is separate the thigh from the body. And you're gonna need to cut through the joint, but instead of trying to find where the joint is with your knife, I find it easier to just open it up like a book until the thigh bone pops off. You can see it right here. And then you can see exactly where the joint is. And when you cut around the joint, there will be zero resistance, like that. If you're trying to blindly find it with the tip of your knife, you'll hit the bone and it'll be hard, and then you're kind of moving the knife around. Easier to just pop it off so you can see exactly where you're cutting through. We'll put that leg away for now. And this bit of meat, we're gonna cut off. Perfect for our curry. So just get any sort of chunky pieces of meat off that you can see. And then turn it around. Do the same thing on the other side. Cut the skin that separates the body and the drum. Open it up. Pop. I can see the joint. Then cut through it. Two. These chunky bits of meat is like the best part. And my duck is kind of cold, so if you're doing this while the duck is warm, it's actually gonna be a little bit easier. Now, the breast. We're gonna go right in the middle, but slightly off to the side because you want to be on the side of the keel bone, which is the bone that separates the two breasts. Now see, it's cold, so it's a little harder. And then I'm gonna just use my hand and the knife to sort of peel the breast off. Because this is already cooked, it should sort of peel off easily. If this was raw, you'd have to use your knife to get everything off, but because it's cooked, you can peel it off and then cut the skin off. And that's one beautiful breast. There. Turn it around. Do the same thing on the other side. And as you do it, if you find that exactly how I'm showing you isn't really working for you, please feel free to just figure out a position that's more comfortable. Because I find it's quite personal, right? Whether you're working it, if you're left-handed, everything's gonna be reversed. So I'm just showing you sort of the pieces that will come off, but feel free to find your own sort of position. And that's pretty much it. The deboning of the duck is done. Duck wings have almost no meat in it, so don't even worry about it. I'm just gonna, like, the meat around here is so dry. I'm just gonna throw that into my stock. You can pull that off easily. Oh, you know what? One thing you should do is make sure to get the oyster sometimes. The oyster is little chunky piece of meat right next to the middle bone here. This piece is the chef's snack. It is the most flavorful, tender, juicy little piece of meat that people miss, but you're not gonna miss it. So it's right here at the top of the drumstick. Sometimes it comes off with the thigh, but you should always check. There we go. There, right there. And that's it. Now, I like to just go around and make sure you didn't leave behind any chunky pieces of meat that would be good in the curry. You don't wanna waste that. Like that piece there, that piece there. Okay, I think I'm pretty happy with that. And now this bone is quite big. Your pot may not be big enough. So you wanna break it in half, which is a lot easier than it sounds, because again, this has already been cooked for a long time. This way it'll fit nicely into sort of a medium-sized pot. The wings. And then we still have more bones from the thigh, which we'll add to it after we cut the meat. And by the way, if you want to take the skin off and put it in the curry, because the skin will actually be really good, I just feel like there's going to be so much skin already from the meat that we have that if you take the skin from here, the curry will just be full of skin and it would look a little weird. But by all means, if you wanna just take that off and snack on it, that's fine. I just put it in the curry and it adds also flavor to the curry. So do whatever you want with the skin is what I'm trying to say. Okay, thigh bones. We're gonna first remove the drums and the thighs. And again, so this one's a little harder because you want to cut between the joints, but you can't see very well. But my trick is this. If you're cutting through it and it feels hard, you're cutting through bone. Okay, so you're gonna move the knife a little to the side until it is no longer hard to cut through. So there we go. So now I can cut right through it. That means I'm cutting through a joint. Okay, so don't dull your knife by trying to cut through the bones. And then you've separated the drums. If you wanna leave this as a garnish at the end, you can too, like sticking it up like this. You have plenty of meat for the curry itself. And then for the thigh, just gonna cut this chunky piece off. This is all meat. And then rescue this bone here. There you go. And then you've got this. That's a cartilage. You don't want that. Put that into your duck pot. And then we'll cut that into pieces later. Again, you sort of estimate cut through it. Oh, look at that. I went right through the joint. Lucky me. And duck is very fatty. So this is gonna be very oily. So be very careful. Make sure you have a firm grip on everything. You don't want your hand slipping and then cutting yourself. All right, so now we just have a pile of nice looking meat. The thighs, we can just cut everything into bite-sized pieces. And you don't have to worry too much. The thigh meat is not gonna look particularly beautiful. It's just gonna go into the curry rustically. But the breast, you can do nice pieces. And for a nice presentation, you can either like, you can also keep one breast sort of whole and then put the nice slices on top of the curry without mixing it into the curry. So I can save one breast that's beautiful and don't mess it up. And then the other breast, I can just throw it into the curry without worrying about it. It's very satisfying to slice through a duck breast, especially after all that. And it's done. Yay. See, not so hard. All right, with the duck bones, I'm just gonna add some water. Well, just enough to cover it. What kind of a pouring spout is this? And then let that simmer for about 30 to 45 minutes. I mean, the longer you do it, the stronger your stock will be. But within reason, you don't need to do this for two hours. But if all you've got is 30 minutes, that works too. We don't need to add any aromatics or anything else to it because the duck itself already has so much spices and seasonings that will come out into the broth. Once the duck is done, all we're gonna do is remove the bones. And there you have it. We have a beautiful duck stock for our curry. Easy peasy. One important note, when you buy the duck, you have to tell them that you want the duck whole and not cut, okay? Because if you don't say anything, they will cut it for you. And some places will cut the breast right through the rib cage, in which case you'll have a really hard time deboning your duck for the duck stock. Some places do debone it first, but then you gotta like tell them not to throw away the bones, to give you the bones. And I just find it easier to debone the duck myself than to try to explain it to the auntie butcher what I want. And she'll be like, why you want the bones? I was like, no, just give me the bones. You know, you know, it's just easier to do it myself. Aside from the duck, the other main ingredient for this curry is pineapple. So kang pit-pit yang is usually paired with a fruit and not with a vegetable. That's because duck is a very fatty meat, right? And so we like to balance that fat with the acidity, the tartness from the fruit. Pineapple is the most common one, but I've also seen it done with lychee or with grapes, as long as the grapes are on the sour side. A tip on pineapple, I prefer fresh. The flavor is so much better. Canned pineapple just doesn't have the acidic punch. And also you don't need to go buy a whole pineapple and cut it up. Just go to the prepared fruit, like, you know, where they sell fruit salad and all that, and just buy a container of pre-cut pineapple cubes. Cut it down further into small bite-sized pieces. You do not want to add a big chunk of pineapple in because otherwise when you eat it, it's just a bite of pineapple, right? You want it to accent the duck. So you want the pieces to be pretty small, something like that, okay? And that's it. Let's make the curry. As per usual, we start by bringing some of our coconut milk to a full boil and then add our red curry paste. Now, since my curry paste does not have shrimp paste added, I'm gonna add a little bit of shrimp paste to boost that umami. Optional, but highly recommended. Stir the curry paste over medium heat until the mixture is very thick. And then eventually the coconut oil will start separating from the paste, which looks like this. Now, if your coconut oil does not separate and the mixture is super thick, it is okay to just move on. I discuss this oil separation in detail in my curry masterclass, which I will link to below. Then I'm going to add the rest of my coconut milk, our beautiful duck stock, and then season it with some palm sugar and some of our fish sauce. I'm keeping the rest for final adjustment. And we're gonna bring that to a boil to make sure our palm sugar is completely dissolved. Once the sauce is fully boiling, I'm gonna add our pineapple pieces and also the duck. And now we're gonna let the curry simmer for three to four minutes for all the flavor exchange to happen. The pineapple is gonna release the juices into the curry and the duck is going to absorb the curry flavor. This is where the magic happens. While the curry is simmering, we're gonna deal with our tomatoes. Now, you want either cherry or grape tomatoes, which is a classic pairing for gang pit pit yang. Now, one thing that I like to do is pierce them with a pairing knife. And the reason I do this is because I'm going to add them whole into the curry just briefly because I don't wanna cook the heck out of them and have them turn mushy in the curry. Now, the tomatoes should naturally split, okay? The skin should naturally split from the heat, but sometimes you get one particularly stubborn tomato that does not split, and then you put it in your mouth and you bite into it and the hot tomato juices explode in your mouth and it is not fun. Adam has PTSD from that happening to him, okay? So we're gonna prevent that by creating a vent hole so that no tomato shall be building up pressure that's going to be a hazard. All right, so the duck and the pineapples have had three to four minutes to simmer. We're gonna call that done. Turn it off, but we have to taste the curry sauce now because everybody's curry paste is gonna be different. I added some shrimp paste. Maybe you didn't add shrimp paste. Everybody's duck is gonna be different. The pineapple, so like it's so important that you taste and adjust your seasoning as needed, okay? So good. Oh, there's so much flavor in that. I can taste the spices but very subtly. The acidity of the pineapple, you can definitely taste it. Mm, oh man, that's so good, so good. I'm gonna add a little bit more fish sauce. I don't need a lot. And that's it. Now we're gonna add our diffused tomatoes and the heat from the curry should be enough to warm them through, make them not taste raw, but not so much that they're gonna disintegrate into the curry. And then the Thai basil as well, which we also wanna add off heat because we don't want it to turn black and get all wilty. We just want to gently infuse. And my gosh, my pot is almost not big enough for this curry. And that's it. How beautiful and easy is this curry? My goodness, look at that. So decadent. Now let me show how to plate this curry to impress your guests. You wanna use a wide shallow bowl, like a pasta bowl is great, and ladle some of that curry in, making sure you've got some tomatoes and pineapple. And then we're gonna top it off with those nicely sliced breast pieces that we saved from earlier. And then also that drumstick that I saved from earlier, we're gonna just nudge that into the side so that people can see exactly that there is Chinese barbecue duck in this dish. And look how beautiful that is. And what I also like to do is brush some of the curry sauce on the duck so the duck doesn't look like you just put it there, that the duck is part of the curry, pretend the duck has been in the curry, just to make it look a little shinier. And now look what a stunner of a dish this is and how easy it was to actually make. Mm, I'm so excited about this. And of course, you want to eat this with jasmine rice. And by the way, you are going to have leftover duck stock and on the written recipe post on hotthaikitchen.com, I will give you some ideas what you can do with the duck stock, but it's a great base for really any kind of soup. Okay, look at that. Ah, that looks so good. I want a little bit of pineapple in with a little bit of duck, lots of curry sauce. That is phenomenal. There is so much going on. The duck is tender and flavorful and that flavor, man, just works so well with the flavor of Thai curry paste, which is not something you wouldn't assume, but it just is a fantastic pairing. The pineapple gives an acidity that balances out the richness of the curry and the duck. Oh my God, it's unbelievable. And it looks so luxurious and beautiful. You don't have to tell anybody that you didn't make the duck. My goodness. Mm, I love it. I could drink that broth. So the recipe, as always, will be on hotthaikitchen.com. And if you have my book for both the new and the old version, the recipe is there as well. And if you haven't got the book and you want to buy it, I'll put the link to where to buy it below. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. If you want to know what that's all about, how you can join our private Discord, I'll put the link below as well. Thank you as always for watching, and I will see you next time. Sawaddee ka.