I had duck as kid from my father’s hunts and it was quite good aside the the occasional lead or steel pellet you would hit. I’ve had duck twice in restaurants and it was godawful each time. Bony, greasy, tough … it had obviously spent a LOT of time in the freezer.
Unless you are doing some kind of high end restaurant where the items are fresh it’s not worth the risk to me.
There are several restaurants in my town that have duck on the regular menu - almost exclusively Asian places (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese). There are more restaurants that will have it on special every now and then.
I enjoy it quite a bit when done well, but you definitely have to want a rich meal.
My guess is that the higher fat content and the smaller amount of meat on the average duck. A duck might not really feed two people.
While there are advantages to both it should also be pointed out that ducks are much much more difficult to keep in subsistence or small farming in the environments that were common. While none of these differences are really impossible to deal with they did effect some choices.
Note that I am not claiming that any of these are factually true but just that they have been communicated to me. I am not particularly fond of live chickens but do not mind ducks so most of these reasons are due to me asking various family and friends about the subject over the years.
So if you think of a pre-refrigeration era which only happened within homes in the lifetime of my father these issues can be critical.
In random order.
Chickens to not fly well enough to just fly away.
Ducks require much more straw for bedding as they far far messier than even turkeys in their bedding.
Chickens are easier to house as they will roost to sleep and also lay eggs, as a modern example you cannot use a “chicken tractor” for ducks.
Ducks really need water to preen, and they will defecate in that water so it must be cleaned and maintained if you do not have an appropriate water source. If you raise them without a pond or water source they can tend to be dirty and have more health problems. Remember they are waterfowl.
Duck eggs have a strong flavor and while larger are less useful for baked goods like leavened bread although not due to the flavor. Duck eggs when used in baking tend to make things “fluffier” which will lead to more airflow and earlier spoilage.
The above mentioned where chickens produce more white meat.
Commercially, due to lots of the above issues ducks can be more difficult to keep intensively which actually allows smaller producers to make more money from raising ducks, but not at scale.
Ducks to have lots of advantages like the fact that they will eat larger bugs and pests (a big reason to have fowl on a small farm) and they do not scratch in a way which will destroy gardens and their dung doesn’t need to be prepared to be used as fertilizer. Ducks can also be herded and driven to various fields to forage from which is not possible with Chickens. They also deal with dampness and cold better than chickens so there are many advantages but not enough to actually become the “normal” domesticated animal here.
There are dozens of reasons for selecting one over the other and it is probably only a complex mixture of all of these advantages and issues which ended up with the current preferences.
I’m not sure about the smaller amount of meat, at least for domesticated ducks.
That’s about the same growth rate as the standard chicken (~4 lbs in 7 weeks).
It’s very common in southwest France, particularly Gascony where it’s pretty much a staple, served in many different styles and sometimes done quite rare, the way we might do a good steak. There’s even a recent book about it.
Personally not my favorite at all, probably because I’m not a big fan of dark meat and duck is quite fatty. Although the right kind of smoked duck breast, in small quantities, makes a decent addition to a charcuterie, but I won’t normally have it as a meal.
there’s that, too. domesticated chickens and turkeys have been bred to be enormous with unnaturally outsized breasts.
several years ago I got it in my head to roast a couple of geese for Christmas dinner. aside from dealing with all of the fat rendering off, they were pretty scrawny.
but oh so good.
It’s easy to find in Asian restaurants and Asian grocery stores around here. It’s also usually available in French restaurants, as was said.
At one point ducks were being hunted to near extinction level here in the United States in order to keep up with restaurant demands as well as loss of habitat. Before there were regulations put into place, commercial hunters would use punt guns, 4-6 gauge shotguns often running the entire length of the boat, to kill dozens of ducks sitting in the water with a single blast. American tastes have changed over the decades. Duck hunting is still popular but outside of Asian or fancy restaurants I don’t see duck on the menu these days.
Another vote for much more fatty, all dark meat ( and stronger tasting dark meat than either chicken or turkey ), and lower meat/bone( and fat ) ratio.
Now personally I’m a fan - nothing like a good Thai duck curry, a dish I probably have several times a year. But every time I get it with friends there are put off by the fattiness ( the rich, delicious, succulent fattiness ) - “it’s all fat and skin, and a lot less meat” they say. That’s the POINT, I reply :D. But yeah, it just doesn’t appeal to the average American palate as much.
Mom tells me it was always greasy, and she didn’t like it. So we never got any, even when offered (by people who would shoot them, of course). No one else I know seems interested, either, so I would only get it alone at a restaurant–and I’ve not seen it any restaurants.
Duck is awesome. Go to Chinatown and get some Cantonese roast duck.
Duck is very good, though i would never eat mine, they give me lots of nice eggs instead.
It is a bit oily, and it is all dark meat.
You can still buy it, but it is not cheap.
I like it seasoned and roasted or broiled, no sauce just the duck.
I think most americans prefer boneless skinless chicken breast which is all white meat.
That is what stores carry the most of, people buy it like crazy.
Me, i’m not fond of the white meat, very bland and dry to me.
I have both chickens and ducks, some things to note that i saw were wrong.
My chickens fly and when not lazy can fly pretty well
My ducks can not fly at all, i have Pekin and Rowan
My ducks out weigh my chickens for the most part
The ducks sleep with the chickens (no not on the roosting bars, in straw bedding) and they lay eggs with the chickens, they share nests.
The ducks generally outlay the chickens for part of the year.
Pan-fried duck breast is an essential part of my cassoulet. Duck confit is more traditional, but I like the extra heft of the breasts.
I wonder the same thing about goose.
Heck around here Canadian geese quit migrating years ago and now we have them everywhere making a big mess. The solution would be to allow hunting, trapping, and eating them but nobody would allow that.
A chef friend of mine often incorporates duck breast into his menus. It tastes fantastic, but has an awful lot of fat that is supposed to be eaten. I prefer white meat chicken, and other than duck, I always trim and discard fat.
We went to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico a few years ago and duck was served every night as a dinner option. A lot of the guests were from Europe. I quite enjoyed it. Evidently, duck was a fairly common meat in their history, although I am not sure it was your standard Mallard variety.
Our local Safeway stocks frozen duck and goose, but I don’t see duck in restaurants very often except Asian.
I’ve tried roasting duck three times, and every time it has been a near-holocaust in the oven, no matter what helpful hints about draining the fact. :eek: House filled with billowing smoke, pan full of melted fat, just an awful mess. The grocery store does sell some kind of packaged duck meat in little boxes, ready to cook, it’s expensive! I haven’t looked at it, though. They say geese are just bigger ducks insofar as cooking.
I assert President Trump should do something about the undocumented migrants from Canada that spend all their time eating our grass and pooping on our lakeshores! 
For me it’s the expense and extra time to cook it when compared to chicken, fish, pork, or beef. It’s only worth it for special occasions.