Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Chris Jennings Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me today, we have Scott Leysath, the sporting chef, also the cooking columnist for Ducks Unlimited magazine. Scott, you've been doing this for almost 20 years now, I believe. Is that correct? Scott Leysath It feels like it.

Scott Leysath Yeah, it's somewhere in there. Every now and then I look back and think of when the first year was, but I think we're pretty close to 20.

Chris Jennings Well, welcome back to the show. You've been on before. We haven't had you on in, I don't know, it's been six, eight months at least, maybe more than that. I know we knocked out a bunch of cooking shows at the beginning when we kicked off the podcast three or four years ago. You are probably one of the busiest people in the outdoor industry. And so, we haven't been able to catch up. We weren't able to catch up last year at least, but we are happy to have you on here today. Scott, before we talk about, you know, a feature that you recently did in Ducks Unlimited Magazine called International Flavors, Let's discuss what you have going on, because I find it all very fascinating. Before we started recording, you mentioned you have four different shows on the Outdoor Channel. Go ahead and rip those shows off for us.

Scott Leysath I've got the Sporting Chef, which after 20 years, last year I put in a gal, Stacey Lynn Harris, who's the new host of the Sporting Chef. That is a mixture of all sorts of different people cooking fish and game. I've got dead meat, which I host. Dead meat is when we target some of the less targeted species. We were just in South America shooting parakeets and we'll see how that sells with the American audience. And The Fishmonger is about the commercial fishing industry and what the commercial American commercial fishermen are up against. compared to the international fishermen. And then there's Ranch America that's all about putting the best beef on American dinner tables and what, you know, what the cowboys do and what the ranchers do. And, you know, oddly enough, most of the beef that we see on American dinner tables are raised on ranches of 50 head or less. Oh, wow.

Chris Jennings I didn't even realize that.

Scott Leysath That's a great story. Yeah. There's a lot of small ranchers out there that are providing most of the beef for our country.

Chris Jennings Cool. And so that show highlights those different operations, correct?

Scott Leysath It does. It does. The host of the show, I met at a little town of Murphy's up in the Sierras in California. And he is a restaurateur, was trained in France as a chef, and he has a ranch with about 85 head of cattle. And so when I was looking for a host of the show, I found the guy and said, you're hired. He didn't plan on being on TV, but he is now.

Chris Jennings And among all of those, all those shows and every other thing that you're doing, because I know you still travel to some of the shows with different companies, uh, you're also still contributing the cooking column in every issue of Ducks Unlimited Magazine and also several features a year, which is a pretty big undertaking in and of itself among everything else that you're doing.

Scott Leysath Well, and my goal is to get on less airplanes, and since I've got that sporting chef covered now, and I've got some really good field producers and camera people, and so I want to stay home and hunt and fish with my buddies. You know, and there's people that are saying, you know, he gets to do all this great stuff, you know, and I feel very fortunate to have been able to do some really cool experiences that you just read about as a kid, but I hope it doesn't sound too affected. I just want to stay home.

Chris Jennings Yeah. Now I'll be honest, that probably does sound like you're a little spoiled, but me, I say it all the time. You know, I'm very fortunate to get to do what I did with Ducks Unlimited Magazine. I get the opportunity to travel and hunt some really cool places throughout North America. Um, and sometimes I turn some of those trips down and people are like, I can't believe you would turn that trip down to, you know, Alberta or. You know, it's, that's a lifetime trip. I'm like, well, it is. But what's difficult about that is you go to these great places and these great hunts, but you do it with people that you don't know. And I, I've, not that I don't do them and not that I don't enjoy them. Like I said, I don't want to sound like I'm spoiled, but it's a really weird dynamic. I'm sure you get that a lot with so many shows you've been on where you're like, oh my gosh, I wish, you know, Bill was here to see this, like one of your good buddies or whatever, you know, it's like. hunting and fishing is such a camaraderie sort of thing for me, especially, that it's just, it's kind of odd to go out and hunt for two or three days with a bunch of people. Now, granted, a lot of times you make great friends while you're there. You know, I've done that many times, but it is, it is very much so. I say usually halfway through the season, like, I think I want to stay home and hunt with like a couple of my buddies for a few days, you know, like that's kind of, that's kind of my MO by late December, early January, I'm, I'm trying to stick around, you know, locally and hunt.

Scott Leysath Well, and you only have to be so polite with your buddies. That's true. Be on your best behavior. When you're on TV, it's really hard to, well, you know, do the things you do with your buddies in a duck blind.

Chris Jennings That's exactly right. Let's go ahead and roll into this international flavors. And, you know, it's six different recipes and you did this, I believe it was in July, August issue, 2023. It is, in my opinion, it's a fantastic piece. But one of the first questions I'm gonna ask you about this is how did you decide to narrow this down to six? I mean, international flavor, you can go all across the world and add in anything. And I know you've probably done so much traveling to all these different places. I'm sure it was difficult to narrow it down to six recipes.

Scott Leysath You know, I normally don't get myself too worked up over it. I mean, I was looking for different parts of the country, different ways to cook ducks. And when I'm thinking of like Asian, I'm thinking Asian curry. That's just, I don't put a hundred recipes in front of me and say, gosh, I wonder if this one will work. It's mostly just inspiration for me. rather than going too late, the ragu. I tried to combine the low and slow with some of the duck parts and some of the lesser so-called ducks that aren't quite so good at medium rare, a little bit more fall apart, like a pulled pork type of deal. And that's where those recipes come in handy. And for people who can't eat, just can't eat rare to medium rare, I want them to to enjoy the duck because to me there's nothing worse than a well-done cooked duck breast.

Chris Jennings Yeah, well done is not how you cook duck.

Scott Leysath And people eat it well done and I don't know how, they seem like they like it sometimes and I don't get it. Yeah. But, you know, if you're going to go well done, I think what you need to do is just go low and slow. Cook it wet for several hours until it kind of falls apart like a pulled pork. To me, that's doable. The well done grilled duck steak, not so much.

Chris Jennings Not so much. Well, that, that definitely is the lead right into the first recipe that you chose here. And it was, uh, you know, the country is Italy and you chose the ragu, which that's exactly how you start with this ragu. And, you know, it's low and slow. You're cooking this duck down, but you're also maintaining that tenderness and that flavor, um, when you do it. So kind of walk us through this recipe, um, just as, as how you would approach this. And it looked, the images were fantastic. And just to go on note, this was my favorite one of, uh, of these six recipes.

Scott Leysath Well, and you know, the low and slow is very forgiving. So you can cook, you can take a mallard and cook it low and slow. And by that, I mean, we're gonna braise it. So when you're braising any piece of meat, you season it, you brown it in some kind of oil, some kind of fat, and then it goes into a, you can either do it on top of the stove or in the oven, but it's gonna be low temp with vegetables and liquid. And the liquid and the low temperature and the time is what's gonna make that fall off the bone. which is the victory. Again, you don't want chewy, well-done duck meat in a ragu with pasta. You want it to be tender. You want it to be flavor. You pair it with al dente pasta, finish it with a little bit of cream. It's really, really good. And one of the things I like to do with recipes like this is to serve it to people who say they don't like duck. Because they may have had that, you know, whole duck stuffed with who knows what that was cooked until it was way overdone. and decided that they didn't like duck. But when you have this ragu, this Italian kind of brothy, herbal, really good dish, they'll fall in love with it. And you can put any waterfowl in there. You could use the same recipe. If you've got some random chunks of deer or antelope or whatever, you can do the same thing with that. If you've got different kinds of duck, this works well with that. Some of the ducks that we think of as lesser ducks, like surf scoters and spoonies and that kind of thing, which I happen to love, this recipe's great for that.

Chris Jennings Yeah, it's a perfect kind of catch-all. I'm sure your Canada goose, especially this early in the season, I should say, some of these very liberal seasons, people end up with pretty big bags of Canada geese. And so it's like, what do you do with all of these geese? And so I think this ragout recipe lends itself very well to trying out a Canada goose or even a snow goose, something like that. It really kind of opens the door for that. The next one on the list here is Thailand. It's a duck with red curry and mango. This is something that's probably a little out of my wheelhouse. I'll be honest. Not that I wouldn't eat it, but as far as me just coming up with an idea to do this, but I know you just like you had mentioned, curries kind of on your list of things that you like to make. So kind of explain this duck with red curry and mango.

Scott Leysath Well, Asian curries, there's red, yellow, and green Asian curries, and they're basically of different heat, different flavor, but they're all pretty close. I don't like Indian curries. The curry powder that my mother would put way too much of on food when I was a kid, I'm just not a fan, but the Indian, the Asian curries, the Asian curries, I really, really like. They're a lot milder. It's not such an overpowering flavor. But if you look at the recipe itself, there aren't a lot of ingredients. And what you need to do is go to the grocery store and get a jar of red curry paste. It's basically mixed with kaffir lime leaves I find on Amazon. If you can't find kaffir lime leaves, just some lime zest from a regular lime works just fine. It's a little sweet, it's a little spicy, but it's not overpowering, and it allows the duck to speak for itself. It still tastes like duck. The victory with your recipes is not that something doesn't taste like duck or goose, which is what a lot of people try and do is they try and make their duck not taste like duck. This curry, this red coconut curry that goes with it, doesn't distract from what the duck tastes like. You've got a little mango in there too for sweetness, and you just serve it on top of warm jasmine rice, and I love this recipe. That's my favorite photo from this article. I love the color on that.

Chris Jennings It is a great photo. I was just looking at that as well. Now, one question with any of these recipes, you're a big fan of brining your duck before. Now, are you brining this duck before you're serving it with a recipe like this, or are you trying to let the duck stand alone more in that manner?

Scott Leysath Well, I brine all of my waterfowl. And by brine, I use a high mountain game bird and poultry brine. Full disclosure, I get it for free. I would imagine. But I use it all the time and it's one of the things that I share with people. If not, if you take a half a gallon of water and mix it with a half a cup each of kosher salt or any coarse salt and brown sugar and you leave your duck in there overnight What that does is it draws out whatever blood is left inside that duck breast or the whole duck itself. Where we lose people is when they cut into a piece of perfectly cooked duck and the juice runs out and they go, I don't like blood. And it's not blood, it's myoglobin. When you brine it, it doesn't make it taste any different. It's going to add a little bit of salt to it, so you want to use less salt in the seasoning. But it really just mellows out the duck and gets rid of those last traces of capillary blood.

Chris Jennings Yeah, that's all it's… I was curious about that, whether or not you were brining before doing some of these recipes, but it sounds like it's probably a good idea for everyone to do a little brine on every duck that they're cooking.

Scott Leysath It really does make a big difference. And the reason I don't state it on every recipe is I'd have to write in every recipe, brine, and then they'll explain what a brine is. So, yeah.

Chris Jennings We'd probably edit it out after about the fifth time you did that.

Scott Leysath I never read them after I send them in, so I would assume they're all edited. I don't know. They are. Uh-huh.

Chris Jennings So, the next recipe up is South Africa, and that is a marinated duck. Now, this is probably one of the more just basic recipes here, but really, I think what fascinates me is that you had a pretty good story on why you chose this based on some trips that you had made. So, what is the reason why you chose this just marinated duck?

Scott Leysath Well, we were shooting TV shows in South Africa, and I noticed that Every piece of meat that they cooked was, I don't know if you're familiar with how they do it there, but it's a real wood, white hot grill, smoky, real wood, white hot grill. And everybody that we were with, they took every piece of meat and just soaked it in olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and sometimes a little soy sauce for 24 hours. They throw it on that screaming hot grill, get it nice and well-browned on the outside and still rare to medium rare on the inside, and the meat just melts in your mouth. And it doesn't compromise the meat. It still tastes exactly like it's supposed to, but you haven't disguised the flavor. Now, my wife, who doesn't eat wild game, which is a little embarrassing,

Chris Jennings I was going to say, that's a little odd. Does she starve over there? I assume you eat wild game for every meal, but okay.

Scott Leysath She loved it. I mean, her favorite was the zebra loin, which you wouldn't think would be all that tender, but these zebra loins were incredible. They were as tender as any beef tenderloin I've had. And it was just, I'm telling you, try this olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Don't mess it up. Leave it in there for 24 hours. Throw it on a grill. That olive oil is only going to penetrate so far, but it's going to add a little bit of fat and it's really going to help in the browning when you go to put that over the heat.

Chris Jennings Yeah. Now, I did know that they cooked pretty… I've had a couple buddies who have talked about that where, you know, they basically just throw everything on that hot grill. But the basics of that marinade is, I think, something for people to take note of. I mean, you don't have to have some, you know, outlandish marinade here. You don't have to have Italian dressing. Right.

Scott Leysath You don't have to use it. Although Italian dressing, for people that are just starting out, just getting into the whole cooking thing, take a duck breast, soak it in Italian dressing for a couple hours, don't overcook it. it's better than it might've been the one that you had before.

Chris Jennings That's right. Yeah, it's worth a try, but I think the basics of this marinade is so cool, because it is literally, you know, the garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, maybe a little soy sauce, but man, and then just take it, throw it right on the grill. Don't have to complicate it. There's no reason to break something that's, or fix something that's not broken, for sure. Now, the next recipe you chose was from Turkey, and it was the kebabs. So a duck kebab, I'm sure you can make this with goose as well, but the recipe itself was labeled as the duck kebab. Kind of walk us through this recipe and even the story behind it, because I happen to know David Draper, who you mentioned in the article, and he's quite the foodie too. So if it's something he brought up, I'm like, I'd probably try that for sure.

Scott Leysath And by the way, Draper did send me a thank you for giving him a heads up in the article, too. Nice. So, David, thank you for reading the Ducks Unlimited magazine. I appreciate that. Absolutely. I did a deal with him somewhere in Utah several years ago, and he had just come back from Turkey. And the kebabs that most people are used to are cubed, chunked up meat with vegetables on a skewer, but this is ground meat. And you take a flat skewer and you can get those on Amazon also. The ones that I used in the photo barely qualified. They weren't quite as wide as the ones that you can find that they use in Turkey. and you take the ground meat and you build it on this flat skewer. So it's almost like hamburger, but it stays on the skewer and you can add whatever kind of flavors you want to add to it. I mean, the flavors in turkey are just a little bit different. You know, you're going to have some cinnamon, some sumac, and if you don't have sumac, just use coriander. I don't want to go through the whole list of what's in there, but it's Turkish flavors. There's also some ground either lamb, beef, or pork in there. You need to add some fat to your ground duck. And if you don't have a grinder, you can just take your duck or your goose, take the skin off, chunk it up and get it almost frozen and then just pulse it in a food processor. But be careful because you want it to be about pea size. You don't want it to be a duck paste. Don't turn it to mush. Don't over process it, yeah. But that works just fine. You know, you can do so much with ground duck and goose. Anything you can do with a burger, you can do with ground duck and goose. You just want to add some fat to it.

Chris Jennings Yeah, that's good to know. Don't forget to add the fat. It definitely needs a little bit of that fat just to cook through and everything. I mean, that's necessary for sure. The next recipe you did was in Mexico, and that was a duck chorizo. Now, this one is right up your alley, I'm sure, because I know that you've You, you do a lot of Tex-Mex, Southwest, a little bit, you know, you dabble in a lot of that type of food. And so I was assuming you were going to go, you know, this route, but this is, this is a pretty cool one. And one that, you know, has served so many different purposes. I mean. anything from, you know, dips to, you know, you can use this chorizo across the board. And it'd be a great use for, you know, something that you have left in the freezer or like you said, maybe some of the lesser, you know, ducks or lesser thought of ducks, I should say. But kind of walk us through this chorizo recipe and why people should do it.

Scott Leysath Well, and chorizo is, you know, it's basically just a seasoning blend that you add to meat. If you go to the grocery store and you buy that tube of chorizo, Take a look at the ingredients that are on there because it's often things like salivary glands and lymph nodes. And I'm not saying those are bad because we eat all sorts of things we don't know about, but when you just take duck… and you season it and you again we're going to add some pork to this because we've got to add fat to it you know this is going to be this and this you can use as a patty you can put it into a casing you can use it ground you could make a taco salad with this after you're done with it But it's basically a lot of seasoning. You've got paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder, some more savory herbs, cinnamon. You combine everything and you brown it. It's that simple. The blend of the seasonings for chorizo I really like, but chorizo doesn't have to be hot and spicy. It's more of a savory flavor than it is a hot spice.

Chris Jennings But you can add spice. If somebody wants to be spicy, that's the best part about this. You can add it if you need it, you know, especially after. Now, I mean, I think this is a great, you know, breakfast burrito in the duck blind type food. You can prepare it beforehand. It'd be something great for duck camp that you can prepare and then bring and add to different dishes. Like I said, dips or, you know, in the picture, you have it under some eggs and, you know, you can do breakfast burritos. You can do just about anything you want to with chorizo. It's a very versatile recipe.

Scott Leysath Well, and if you have a lot of, let's say, conservation hunt geese or snow geese or whatever, and like we had mentioned, you know, they're fun to shoot. But then at the end of the deal, you go, holy mackerel, that's a lot of meat. And you've got a grinder and a couple of people handy. You can grind a lot of that at the same time, season it with that chorizo mixture and then vacuum seal it so that you've got it available anytime you want. It's a great way to get rid of a lot of geese.

Chris Jennings Now, any good culinary piece would be remiss if it did not mention France. So, your next piece, or your next recipe that you chose was from France, and it's a duck or goose cassoulet. From the image, it looks absolutely fantastic. So, you know, as we're doing this, and Scott and I are both talking back and forth here about Um, you know, these images, these are all online. You can find this at ducks.org forward slash waterfowl recipes or just recipes. Um, and check out the images that, you know, that were from the magazine, but also it's really kind of sets the tone for each one of these recipes as we go into it. And that's kind of what we're looking at, but Scott kind of walk us through this cassoulet. Cause I think that a lot of people probably would not be familiar with that term, but they would be familiar with what it looks like.

Scott Leysath Well, and you know, the ingredient that stands out in a cassoulet are the white beans, or great northern or navy beans. Again, while the cassoulet does take a little time, but the version that I have is a little bit more streamlined because it's been my experience that if you have a recipe that takes a lot of ingredients and a lot of time, that people just aren't going to do it anyway. And this starts with a little browned pork belly. You season the duck, add that to the pot and brown it, and then there's sausage, there's white beans, and it's just a really, really, it's more like a stew, but not quite as liquid. The last thing you're gonna put in is the beans, and I just use canned navy beans or northern beans, because I think people are more likely to do that than to do the dried beans. And again, it's gorgeous. It will surprise people. It doesn't look like a traditional duck or goose recipe. And the cassoulet, when I think France, for some reason, I think cassoulet.

Chris Jennings Yeah. And like you mentioned, you wanted it to be a little bit more streamlined than an original cassoulet that's extremely time consuming. But I mean, this is still a probably several hour recipe. From preparing to cooking all the way through, you're still going to have to cook those beans through. That's a process.

Scott Leysath But you can also make a big pot of it and eat it for about three or four days too. That's true. Or you can save it for when the boss is coming over because it really is a special dish.

Chris Jennings Yeah, it looks fantastic. I might have to try it. That's one that's on the list this year to try as soon as our duck season opens here for sure. You know, that's all six recipes from the International Flavors feature. But my question for you is, are there any ones that you thought of adding in or something that You know, maybe you looked back and you're like, oh, I remember when I went here and I should have done this. Or have you gotten any feedback from anyone saying, hey, you should have added this, anything like that?

Scott Leysath You know, I haven't gotten any feedback, but you know, the fact that I've cooked so many recipes in so many places, I mean, I forget the recipes that I've done over the years. I mean, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm no spring chicken. So, you know, I find that I forget recipes and then somebody will point out a recipe in a magazine or a cookbook and I'll say, hey, wait. That's mine. So that might just be a sign of aging that I just don't really spend a lot of time trying to decide. I look for more inspiration. I can't think of anything I would have added to this unless we went to a different country. But I'm telling you, I'm looking at it right now and reminding myself of what I put in here. And these are all solid recipes that if anybody has a problem with them, Give me a holler and I'll find out what I did wrong. I'm looking at this list in front of me and these are my favorite international duck recipes.

Chris Jennings Now, I will add one thing. I was hunting in Saskatchewan several years back and we had shot some snow geese and some cranes and kind of a hodgepodge of ducks, some divers, some puddle ducks. And the outfitter that we were with was like, hey, would you be interested in taking these down to the local Chinese restaurant? And this is a small town in Saskatchewan too. So we took several of these birds down to the local Chinese restaurant. And they're like, yeah, just be here at six o'clock and we'll have dinner. And we're like, well, what are you making? And they're like… And we're like, okay, that's cool. So, we went there and they had, you know, a lot of the kind of more Americanized Chinese dishes that people would be accustomed to, the general so's, the sweet and sour chicken, the beef and broccoli, things like that, that people are very familiar with. They made them all with our water fowl and it was fantastic. Like, just unbelievable dishes that, you know, all of us sitting around the table, like, I never thought we'd be able to make. you know, to try and make a beef and broccoli with, you know, a, a duck, you know, beef and broccoli style recipe with the sauces and the rice. I think they did a, uh, snow goose fried rice, which was okay. It was all right, but it was, it was like, you know, but they had the list of everything that they did and, and it was just spectacular. And that just jumped into my head thinking, um, I guess that's international because I was in Canada and it was Chinese food. So I guess that counts, right?

Scott Leysath Multi-international. Yeah. And, and yeah. A couple of the restaurants here in Sacramento area where I live, they do the same thing. You bring in your ducks and your pheasants and your whatever, and they basically just use your protein in the same dishes that they do on their regular menu. And it's really good. And the Asian dishes are normally long on flavor. They do a lot of marinades and that kind of thing. And it's crazy how you can make that duck or that deer or whatever taste just like any of the other dishes that they do. When I had a restaurant years ago, that's kind of how I got started doing this on a larger scale is people would bring us their ducks and geese and we would prepare it for them because I would have a wild game on my menu and people would say, how come mine doesn't taste like yours? And I'd say, bring it in. And we would cook their fish and game for them. And hopefully they would learn along the way that it wasn't the duck's fault. If they didn't like it, they just weren't cooking it right.

Chris Jennings You're overcooking it probably.

Scott Leysath Pretty much.

Chris Jennings That's about, now I'm talking to you and some other chefs that we deal with on occasion and my own experience, 95% of the problem with most people cooking waterfowl is that they're overcooking. Would you agree with that?

Scott Leysath I absolutely been, you know, I've always threatened to write a cookbook that just said, don't overcook it because it really is that simple. But I'll tell you in the, let's see, almost 40 years that I've been doing this, people are getting much better at it. And you see a lot of people that are getting a lot more serious about how they cook their ducks and geese. They're respecting the game that they bring home a lot more than they may have in the past. Whereas there are a lot of people that just did chili or just did a stew or wrapped everything in bacon and jalapeno and cream cheese. And I think people like these international recipes are realizing that there's a lot more that you can do with your wild game than just whatever your dad did. My dad took a duck, stuffed it with wild rice and vegetables and whatever and cooked it for about about two hours. And if you can imagine how bad that was, I'm thinking, I really like duck hunting, but do I have to eat these things? And as it turns out, it wasn't the duck's fault after all.

Chris Jennings Well, that's awesome, Scott. Well, I appreciate you going through this feature, International Flavors. Again, great recipes, like you mentioned. This is something that could potentially open a hunter's eyes to, hey, let's try something different, really encouraging people to open their culinary minds when it comes to waterfowl, and that goes all across the board. Snow geese, Canada geese, ducks, diving ducks, puddlers. It's like you mentioned, I'll use your phrase, I think it's a great one. It's probably not the duck or goose's fault. You're probably cooking it wrong. All right, Scott, thanks a lot. We will have to get you on here soon. I appreciate your time and thanks for walking us through this. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. I'd like to thank my guest, Scott Leysath, for coming on and walking us through his International Flavors recipe from the July-August 2023 issue of Ducks Unlimited Magazine. I'd like to thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for putting the show together and getting out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on the DU Podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.