Easy single-tray baked teriyaki duck legs with pak choy

This easy one-tray meal requires minimal effort to put together, but your family or friends will think it was a mission.

Baked Teriyaki Duck Legs with Pak Choy

Serves 4

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 45 minutes, plus 5 minutes resting

Ingredients
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp mirin
4cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
4 × 200-225g whole duck legs
450g pak choy, base and outer leaves removed, and quartered
6 large spring onions, trimmed and cut lengthways
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

Whisk together the soy, mirin and ginger to make a sauce. Coat the duck legs with 4 tbsp of the sauce (a spoonful per leg), season, then place in a large ceramic baking dish and cook in the preheated oven for 35 minutes. Set aside the rest of the sauce.

Remove the duck legs from the oven and carefully drain off the excess fat (ideally, use a fat-separating jug to retain the cooking juices but remove the fat). Tuck the pak choy and spring onions around the duck legs in the baking dish. Pour half the remaining sauce over the duck legs and drizzle the rest over the pak choy and spring onions.

Return the dish to the oven for 7-9 minutes, until the pak choy has just wilted but still retains a good amount of bite.

Remove from the oven and rest the meat for 5 minutes before serving. Lift the vegetables out of the pan and keep warm, then drain off the remaining sauce, again removing the excess fat. Pour into a jug and keep warm. Serve the duck legs with the sauce and greens.

Tip
You can use this teriyaki-style sauce on all kinds of things – try marinating salmon fillets in it, then pan-frying them, or use it to add a rich flavour to firm tofu.

Extracted from Happy Leons: LEON Happy One-pot Cooking by Rebecca Seal and John Vincent (Conran Octopus, approx €18), www.octopusbooks.co.uk

Photograph by Steven Joyce.