Steamed Chinese Preserved Duck Leg 蒸臘鴨腿

By Ellen L. Published: 2013-11-15

As the winter winds finally creep into Hong Kong after the usual overly long hot summer heat, our minds (and tummies!) begin to drift towards the consideration of warming, comforting winter foods.  This chinese preserved duck leg 臘鴨腿 is one of our favorites.  Raw duck leg is first salted down with spices and chinese rice wine, then hung to slowly dry under the sun.  Wonderfully dense textured, intensely concentrated duck meat flavor, infused throughout with a delectably fragrant oil.  This is seriously good stuff!

Chinese Preserved Duck Leg- Not yet steamed!

However, as usual with most chinese food stuffs (regrettably!), there is a preponderance of so-so preserved duck leg on the market and it takes some searching and investigating to find the really good stuff.  Actually I never used to like preserved duck leg much whenever I had it in restaurants, finding it mostly just very salty and quite oily.  

But my 老公 likes to rummage about, ask questions, and look for interesting supplier of foods and thus stumbled upon our present supplier of preserved salted meats.  An elderly couple, as many of the store owners are in the Hong Kong wet markets, they only stock a few items and just those that are in season and just those that they know are good.  These preserved duck legs are from the smaller preserved ducks, of the two types available.   The other type are larger, meatier duck legs, which most people go for for the obvious reasons (More is Better, right?!), and these duck legs are the really salty ones.

A really simple, comforting chinese winter dish is this chinese preserved duck leg steamed over rice.  It's easy peasy, just throw it in your rice cooker over your rice and steam.  You'll end up with deliciously, crazily fragrant rice, gleaming with a delectable slick of duck fat oil, and a plate of lusciously comforting steamed preserved duck leg to go with that rice.  How could this not be the perfect cold weather comfort dish?

Steamed Preserved Salted Duck Leg Recipe 蒸臘鴨腿

(Prep time: 3 mins  Cook time: 20 mins)

Rice Cooker (not non stick!)

Ingredients:

1 chinese preserved duck leg 臘鴨腿
1 spring onion, chopped to rounds
Rice, however much you want to prepare

Directions:

Rinse the preserved salted duck leg under the hot water tap for about a minute, using your fingers to rub at the surface oil.  This will wash off top layer of oil, dirt, etc.  Measure out rice you desire to prepare (for using rice cooker to cook rice see our post on Dried Shrimp Steamed White Rice), rinse rice and add correct amount of water.  Place the whole duck leg right on top of the rice/water.  Put the rice pot into the rice cooker and press cook.  When your rice is steamed so is the Preserved Duck Leg.  Remove duck leg to chopping board and chop to bite sized pieces.  Sprinkle chopped spring onion over and serve along with the oil infused rice.

More Local Foods at The Hong Kong Cookery:

Chinese Jinhua Ham 金華火腿

Hong Kong Hawker Traditional Fruit Candy

Chinese Salted Fish 鹹魚

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