We Tried the Best Peking Duck in NYC

[blower whirring]

[fire crackling]

Welcome, we are here in Flushing, New York,

the biggest Chinatown in New York City.

We're here because I've been told the most traditional

Peking duck in New York City is made at

JUQI here in Tangram Mall.

This is a regular mall.

Welcome to the Prep Kitchen.

This is where all of the Peking Duck prep begins.

The whole day is about building up to a perfect,

glassy, crispy, crunchy skin,

and nothing in the preparation process

will compromise that texture.

The air gets pumped underneath the skin of the duct

to release the skin from the flesh itself.

This gives it ample space for that fat to render out

during the cooking process, making a slit

underneath the armpit of the rose duck

to remove all of the organs.

The reason why the slit is right there is to preserve

the integrity of the skin so it doesn't split.

Chef is taking off the duck feet, making a little bit

of slit in the neck to release any of their remaining blood.

It also is going to be the entrance for his air pump.

Traditionally, this is probably the most iconic

step in making Peking duck.

These ducks come in from Long Island every single day.

They're very special duck

that has its roots in Chinese style Peking duck

but was introduced crossbred

and become really its own breed of duck today.

Chef in the US has noticed some differences.

One of them is that during the butchery process,

American Peking duck isn't bled thoroughly

after it's killed,

and so it will retain some of its unpleasant gaminess.

The leaks and the ginger and the Citron peppercorn

and the lemon in the blanching process help get rid of all

of that nasty blood flavor.

They're like balloons. They are quite cartoonish.

You can see all the nasty pink liquid coming out.

All of that is game, and you can smell it in the air too.

He's also trying to get a lot of water inside of the balloon

of the carcass to flush out the inside of the duck.

You can imagine cleaning a balloon inside out.

It's a tedious process.

It takes a lot of work, but it also is quite delicate

because you don't want to damage the skin.

The minute that you have any excessive holes in the skin

of a duck, you'll lose the integrity

of the entire structure of its skin.

Chef is blanching the ducks to tighten that skin.

As it comes in contact just for a couple of seconds

with boiling hot water, the surface proteins are going

to tighten up, exposing the pores

so that later it'll dry more consistently

and more thoroughly.

The duck before it goes in hot water is a little wrinkly.

It's bubbly, but as he dunks into that hot water,

even for just a couple of seconds, 3, 4, 5,

it'll come out nice, white,

glossy, like an inflated balloon.

Without this blanching process, the duck is not going

to dry consistently,

and that duck skin is not going to be as crispy

and as consistent as it could be.

The next step is to start glazing them and drying them.

The drying room is next door.

Come with me and chef is glazing them with a little bit

of a warm glazing liquid.

Now every single place does it a little bit differently.

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

[chef speaks Chinese]

Jeff is glazing the ducks

with his pale yellow liquid.

We're calling it a glaze here,

but it's not as thick as a barbecue glaze.

It's more like a syrup. There isn't a huge amount

of flavor here, so most of the spices, the lemon,

the onions, it's for getting rid of gameyness.

It's not so much it for really seasoning that duck.

The glaze is two things.

The first is the sugar that clings to the skin.

As it meets heat, it is going to help encourage

that caramelization, that mired reaction.

It's gonna give it that nice color

and a little bit of that sugar shatter crust shell.

The second thing is sugar is actually going

to pull out a little bit of moisture from that skin

to help the dehydration process.

So one of the things I've noticed is

that throughout this entire preparation process,

there actually isn't a huge amount of salt or seasoning

or spices involved.

The duck in the original Beijing Peking style is supposed

to be flavorful enough

that you won't need a huge amount of seasoning.

This room is cool, close to about 40 degrees.

It feels like a walk-in, but there's a gigantic fan

on the side and two gigantic DeWalt fans,

industrial fans, mounted to the top

that are going to encourage a huge amount

of airflow to make sure

that water evaporates despite being at that low temperature.

Between this drying room

and the fridge on the outside, it will probably dry

between one and two days before it gets roasted.

It's a little less than I expected, to be honest.

It's not a dry aging process,

it's just a dehydration process.

The ducks at the back are the ones that have been there

for a day, and you'll see

that they've picked up a little bit of color

just from moisture evaporating.

When you see that tight skin that gloss, you'll know

that the duck is almost ready to be roasted.

Take a look at this fridge outside.

This is the one that's on display.

All of these ducks have been sufficiently dried,

and you'll see that the color is a little bit different.

It's lighter brown, it's a little bit yellow,

and you can see how tight the skin is going to be.

There used to be a tradition in Beijing,

when people ordered Peking duck,

They would pick their specific raw duck carcasses

that they would want, and then they would write their names

onto the front of the breast.

This did two things; number one, if the skin was still wet,

the ink wouldn't set

and they would know that the duck wouldn't come out right.

The second is that after the roasting process,

if they could still see their name written in black ink

on the top of the duck, then you would know

that the duck was roasted properly.

It wasn't burned and it was made just for you.

This is the famed roast duck oven.

Whoa, so hot.

This oven is really quite special. Came from China.

They had it built purposefully for this.

It is a [speaks chinese].

The flames are exposed.

Traditionally, Beijing roast duck,

Peking duck would have been done

with something like fruit wood or charcoal.

That's really hard to get permitting here in New York City,

but this is the next best thing.

This open flame means

that chef has more control over the cooking of the duck.

He can bring it out to the front, rotate it, use a flame

to get it to lick certain parts of that duck

that aren't fully cooked yet to get

that nice consistent shell.

The number one arbiter of weather Peking duck

is proper Peking duck is the texture

and the quality of that skin.

They're looking for glassy, crispy, crunchy in the center

of the breast and on the legs.

It's a little bit more fattiness.

The gold standard is yo er bu ni.

Yo er bu ni in Chinese means fatty, but not greasy.

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

[chef speaks Chinese]

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

[chef speaks Chinese]

Chef was explaining that there are three steps

to roasting duck.

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

First is to warm it up.

That starts at the back,

slightly lower temperature at the back of the oven.

Slowly bring that temperature up.

The first thing that's going to happen,

the remaining water in that skin is going to evaporate.

As that water evaporates, it's going to punch out

and eventually it's set into this basically

foamy type of structure right?

You need all of those proteins to set

with the air bubbles in the middle as the water continues

to punch out and that becomes the shell.

That solid fat needs to become liquid

and drip off down the body out.

You need just enough fat to render out

so it doesn't feel greasy,

but you need that fat to basically fry the duck skin

inside out, so you have a nice crispy,

almost chicharrones thickness level of skin

throughout the entire duck carcass.

The second step is cull, which is roast,

and the duck comes further forward towards the heat source.

The chef will begin splitting it to be even,

and they'll let that shell really harden

and pick up that dark sort of burnished red color.

So chef is now going through the lau process

of singing off certain parts of the duck,

hitting it with just a little bit of heat

from that exposed flame in the front.

He's rotating it. He's checking for doneness of the meat.

He's checking for any pale spots on the skin,

and from a color perspective,

you'll see that even sometimes when the skin

or the moisture has punched out of the skin

and it runs down the side of the duck,

it has these imperfections,

these little like trails of moisture.

Chef is trying to get rid of as much as possible

to keep it nice and aesthetic.

Their standards at the end of the day, are very high

and it's standards that chef has maintained

for about 30 years.

It's about to cook up between 60 minutes and 80, 90 minutes.

It really depends on the size

and the temperature of the oven.

Dinner service is about to begin. I need to order mine.

Let's go sit down.

Peking duck is the national dish of China,

which is to say that it is the dish

that represents the entire culture

and centuries of culinary development the best.

Here we are on the other side of the world

in Flushing, New York inside of a mall

eating this duck that has evolved

for hundreds of years.

That's kind of special.

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

[waiter speaks Chinese]

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

Here look at this thing.

Consistent color, puffed up,

and when you look kind of closely,

you can see the fat rendering out

in between the layers of skin.

A little bit of translucence means that

that fat is rendering out and it's starting

to fry itself inside out.

If you don't eat it hot, the fat's gonna start to congeal

and it's gonna lose a lot of the texture.

So time is of the essence.

Whenever you order here, it's roasted to order,

and then you get a cut table side.

First cut down the center along the breast,

just a little strip in the middle.

This is the prize cut.

Look at that strip in the middle, sewing it out.

He's gonna let it aerate on the side.

Just let it get crispy. Get it like hardened.

Let the rest of the steam steam off, and you can hear it.

It's a very gentle crunch, really nice and consistent. Wow.

Oh my goodness. Why is there a caviar in it?

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

[chef speaks Chinese]

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

Wow. Chef is now going through the side of the leg.

Dark meat, you can see, is a consistent color.

It's not red at all. It's fully cooked.

That's one of the interesting things about Peking duck is

actually because you're roasting it for so long,

it's well done, but still it is really quite juicy.

I mean, you can see the liquid coming out of it itself.

Of course, the duck breast is the most prized part.

The way that they slice it is also traditional.

Some people will call it willow cut.

Some people will call it fish scale cut,

but the idea is that every single slice will have a thin

sliver of skin and then a thin sliver of flesh.

The balance between the fattiness of the skin

and the leanness and the flavorfulness of the breast

is better expressed from these cuts.

One of the more interesting things to me

about the Peking duck experience is the variance in texture.

On the sides of the breast,

you'll see a little bit of this crescent shape on the back.

What sometimes people will call the brisket,

as we learned in Hong Kong, will be something

of a more tender flesh with a thinner layer of skin.

Usually it is served with some sort of bean

or pancake, I suppose.

In this case, they're called lotus leaf pancakes,

basically a flour tortilla.

The other things on the table,

Tianmianjiang sometimes called sweet bean sauce,

sometimes called sweet flour sauce.

It's a fermented soybean paste that is cooked down

with a little bit of sesame, sesame oil, and sugar.

In traditional Peking duck,

Peking duck is not seasoned thoroughly.

That's what the sauce is there for.

The main flavor of the duck is going

to be a delicious aromatic fattiness,

and so in order to cut through any taste of grease

or any unpleasant fattiness, you have things like onion.

You have a little bit of acidity from something

like a pickle or Hawthorne to cut through that grease.

The idea is that in one bite, it all works together.

All of the flavor profiles are balanced.

This is time to address the fact that this is ridiculous.

This is the first episode of 3D Tweets filmed outside

of Asia back in New York, and we've sold ourselves out.

We're eating a dynastic thousand year old dish

with caviar in a mall.

Fatty piece of skin, the center cut eco,

so one bite, crisp caviar over the top.

This is the recommended serve.

I gotta say, I don't want any of the other stuff with it

because this piece of skin alone is magical.

You hardly ever get to see duck skin

of this thickness in New York City.

This is what all that preparation was for,

was to see this elevation

of the skin away from the flesh

and the top layer punching out with the moisture

until it becomes not just crispy, but crunchy.

This chef here did show you

how it's done properly with the duck breast

as a paintbrush, you're painting the sides of the beam,

a couple of pieces laid vertically.

Cucumbers, not too much for texture,

a little bit of washed onions.

The bottom comes up.

Oh, I understand.

Oh, I see. So tight oh, wow.

So its [indistinct] right?

Duck bone soup.

Duck bone soup.

Oh, amazing. Can I have a, [speaks Chinese].

[waitress speaks Chinese]

That was phase one of the meal.

The second phase is the rest of the duck carcass

gets repurposed into another dish soup.

I mean, this is a classic appropriation

of the leftovers, right?

Good, salty, a little bit of the spine, little bit of rib,

some cartilage, and then the parts of the wings,

part of the leg bones become this fried,

crispy salt and pepper dish.

You can also order this spicy with a little bit of chili.

Nice.

[Lucas speaks Chinese]

Good if you're drinking beer.

There are probably some minor differences

between the way the duck tastes here

and the way the duck tastes in Beijing.

But that's not to say that JUQI isn't still dedicated

to traditional craftsmanship,

and I think that this is probably the closest experience

that I've ever had to Peking duck in Beijing.

But here in New York City, it's a delight.