Peking Duck. City Foodsters / flickr / 2014 / CC BY 2.0
The 18th of January is Peking Duck Day.
It celebrates the cooked duck with deep mahogany-brown skin hanging in the windows of some Chinese restaurants. It is now considered a traditional national dish in China.
The method of preparation offers you crispy skin and decadent fatty, rich meat.
You could buy a cooked Peking duck to bring home, or enjoy some in a restaurant with the traditional two-course meal. The first course is small pancakes or buns with hoisin sauce, scallion curls and crisp-skinned deboned duck slices, and then a second course of the bones in soup.
You could even try cooking one at home, though without a brick oven you may not succeed in getting the crispy skin and it can take a third of a day. In fact, most Chinese don’t cook it at home, because most Chinese homes just don’t have ovens — so they buy it already cooked.
You’d have a better chance of succeeding in making at the pancakes at home. The pancakes are called “chun bing” (春饼) , which is translated either as spring pancakes, or duck pancakes, because they are so often used with Peking duck.
See also: Pekin Duck, Peking Duck
#PekingDuckDay
History
Peking duck dates from the Ming Dynasty in the 1500s.
The earliest print mention of Peking Duck Day that CooksInfo is aware of dates from January 2012, in the Nashua Telegraph of Nashua, New Hampshire. [1]”…Peking Duck Day, we celebrate a dish that’s been a favorite of Chinese emperors since the 13th century.” Nashua, New Hampshire: Nashua Telegraph. 16 January 2012. Page 3.
Sources
Gray Painter, Alysia. Succulent Dish: National Peking Duck Day. NBC Los Angeles. 17 January 2014. Accessed July 2019 at https://www.nbclosangeles.com/entertainment/the-scene/Succulent-Dish-National-Peking-Duck-Day-240815821.html
Lynn, Jenn. National Peking Duck Day. CNN ireport. 17 January 2014. Accessed July 2019 at http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1076206
Reiley, Laura. Dining Planner: Peking Duck Day, Evolution Beer Dinner and a slew of cooking classes. Tampa Bay Florida: Tampa Bay Times. 13 January 2016. Accessed July 2019 at http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/food/dining/dining-planner-peking-duck-day-evolution-beer-dinner-and-a-slew-of-cooking/2261094
References
| ↑1 | ”…Peking Duck Day, we celebrate a dish that’s been a favorite of Chinese emperors since the 13th century.” Nashua, New Hampshire: Nashua Telegraph. 16 January 2012. Page 3. |