Ginger Duck Hot Pot 姜母鸭

Ginger Duck Hot Pot (姜母鸭) is a Taiwanese duck dish simmered with mature ginger, sesame oil, rice wine and Chinese medicinal herbs. The See Taiwan Foundation (看见台湾基金会) describes it as one of the representative winter tonic dishes of northern Taiwan, eaten through the damp, cold months around a steaming pot.

How it is made

Most cooks use a male red-faced Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), a breed chosen because its firm meat holds up to long stewing. Slices of mature ginger are first fried in sesame oil, the duck pieces go in and are stir-fried to seal in their juices, and then rice wine and the cook's own blend of herbs are added before the pot simmers over low heat for one to two hours. Chinese Wikipedia lists the essentials of the Taiwanese version as the male duck, sesame oil, mature ginger, rice wine and herbs cooked in a clay pot, and says the finished dish looks dark red; herbs named include Szechuan lovage (川芎), dong quai (当归) and dangshen (党参).

Where it comes from

The origin is not settled. One account traces it to the salt duck (盐鸭) of Quanzhou (泉州) in southern Fujian, which reached Taiwan with migrants and changed there; in Quanzhou that duck is covered in ginger, water and a large amount of salt and slow-cooked over charcoal. Neither the Quanzhou dish nor early Taiwanese ginger duck used sesame oil. In the 1980s Taiwanese cooks added rice wine, sesame oil and herbs, creating the soupy, dark-red pot sold today. From 1993, when Taiwanese businesses began opening shops in Xiamen (厦门), this Taiwanese style in turn influenced ginger duck there; the Xiamen version is braised in an earthenware pot until the sauce cooks away, and is eaten dry.

How it is eaten

In Taiwan the duck is eaten first, dipped in fermented bean paste and fermented tofu. Once the alcohol has cooked off, the broth becomes a hot pot and hot-pot ingredients and vegetables are added a little at a time; wheat vermicelli (面线) or stir-fried dishes are common on the side. Some restaurants in Taipei (台北) serve a version with mud crab (红蟳) cooked in the ginger-duck broth.