I like to cook duck breast on occaision, but it tends to make the kitchen a bit smoky and ultimately makes a mess in the oven with this usual method:

Prep:

1. Pat dry and dry brine the duck breasts (meat side only) by salting with kosher/sea salt on a tray or plate in the fridge, uncovered fat side down, for a few hours (around 2-4).
2. When ready to cook, transfer the duck to a cutting board and score a diamond pattern across the fat side of the duck breast, deep enough to score the fat but short of cutting the breast meat.
3. Salt and pepper both sides of the duck breast.
4. Preheat oven to 400F

Indoor cook:

1. Start duck in a cold cast iron skillet on the range.
2. Turn the heat up to medium until fat starts to render out and starts to pool, then turn the heat up to medium-high to sear the fat side.
3. Flip and sear the other side.
4. Flip fat side down again and transfer the skillet to the 400F oven for about 5-10 minutes depending on the thickness of the breasts (target temp around 125F for medium-rare).
5. Once at the target temp, transfer the duck to a cutting board, fat side up, and let rest for 10 minutes - don’t skip this step as we are letting the duck finish and come to a target temp of 135F while also making sure the juices set in the breast.
6. After 10 minute rest, slice and eat it.

Cooking outside over the coals takes away the concern of a smoky kitchen and messy oven and adds a nice smoky flavor (feel free to add some apple wood chips or chunks in the process below to make even more smoke flavor).

As part of personal and professional life, I find it helpful to have a quick way to dive in and out of my daily plan. This little shell function has served me well over the years, providing a simple format to arrange the day’s thoughts just by typing daily in my shell.

Drop the following snippet in your .bashrc or .zshrc or even better setup a .shellfuncs and source that from those files instead.