Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [107]
Light a grill for direct medium-high heat, about 425°F.
Combine the turkey, apple butter, ketchup, onion, seasoning, and breadcrumbs in a small mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper, then, using your hands, mix gently. Form into 4 patties, no more than ¾ inch thick.
Brush the grill grate and coat with oil. Put the burgers on the grill and cook for 9 minutes, flipping after 5 minutes for medium-done (slightly pink, 150°F on an instant-read thermometer). Add a minute per side for medium–well done (160°F).
When serving, if the burgers will sit, even for a few minutes, keep them and the buns separate until just before eating.
Chapter 9
Duck, Goose & Game Birds
Birds with dark meat, like duck, goose, pheasant, partridge, and wild turkey, are the epitome of fire-roasting. Rich, succulent, fat bubbles up through the skin, basting every luscious morsel of flavorful meat as it browns and crisps to roasted perfection. It’s a pretty picture. Ah, if only reality were the same.
The truth is that all of these birds are delicious grilled, but attaining perfection takes some manipulation. Migratory birds, like ducks and geese, have large deposits of fat to provide energy for long, sustained flights. Wild birds deplete their fat stores, but domestic ducks and geese that no longer migrate retain the fat, which can make their meat greasy and their skin flabby and unpleasant. Short-flight birds, like pheasant and wild turkey, have the opposite problem. They tend to be lean and muscular, qualities that can make their meat dry and tough.
Meeting these challenges on the grill takes ingenuity, which is why there are more unique techniques for grilling these birds than for any other class of ingredients. Take ducks, for example. The challenge of creating a crisp skin from the thick, flabby sheath surrounding a duck’s legs and breast has spurred constant innovation. We inflate the skin with ball pumps, prick the skin to give the fat an escape route, douse the raw bird with boiling water to melt the fat, and then hang the animal on an armature in front of a fan to dry the doused skin–all for gustatory excellence. Grilling hamburgers is a lot easier. But ease is not the main attraction when grilling game birds; succulence is.
The Wild and the Tame
There are two main species of ducks that have been domesticated for food, mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Muscovy (Cairina moschata). Wild Mallard ducks have been bred to produce the domestic Pekin (Peking) or Long Island ducks, which have white feathers, large breasts, and dark rich meat. Muscovy ducks are a little larger than Pekin ducks and have stronger-tasting meat with about 30 percent less fat. Moulard ducks are a cross between a Pekin and a Muscovy that’s raised primarily for foie gras. Because Moulards are continually fattened, they develop exceptionally rich breast meat (the magret), which is considered the best duck breast for grilling.
Most domesticated geese are descended from the European Graylag (Anser anser) or the Asian Swan goose (Anser cygnoides). Embden and Toulouse are the two most popular breeds, both of which yield dark, full-flavored meat. Farm-raised game birds are not bred to be different from their wild counterparts, but their life is substantially more controlled than an animal living in the wild. And therefore their meat is more consistent, more tender, and milder in flavor than their wild relatives. Like domestic animals, farm-raised game is usually slaughtered before it reaches sexual maturity to ensure mild flavor and tenderness.
How to Grill Duck, Goose, and Game Birds
When grilling migratory water birds like ducks and geese it is especially important to take steps to rid them of fat, both for the quality of the finished dish and to avoid flare-ups. These birds have evolved to store large amounts of fat under their skin as insulation in cold water and for fuel during long-distance flights. To keep the cooked skin from being flabby, it is important to render the excess fat by melting it before the meat is finished cooking.
For whole geese