Shredded duck leg noodle salad

Duck legs have featured religiously on my shopping list for the past 4 years. One of the first meals my boyfriend and I cooked together (by cooked I mean threw in the oven and left for 2 hours) was Nigella’s roasted duck legs and potatoes tray bake, and it's made an almost weekly appearance ever since. Mainly because it’s so easy but also because it.tastes.so.good.

However by the 208th time (RIP ducks, sorry) replicating Nigella’s recipe, it got a tiiiiiiny bit repetitive. It’s still on the trusty meal rotation but we mixed up the devouring of duck legs with this noodle salad recipe.

It’s still a ‘leave em and love em’ recipe, with just a few additional mins required to prep and fry the other ingredients. 

Serves: 2

Ingredients
2 x duck legs
Few sprigs of fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
1 red chilli, chopped
Bunch of spring onions, sliced diagonally
Ginger (thumb sized piece), grated or chopped
2 nests of noodles (your choice – udon noodles or egg noodles work well)
Soy sauce
1 tablespoon white rice wine vinegar
Sunflower oil

Preheat oven to 160 degrees c / 320 degrees f

• Season the duck legs with salt and pepper and place in a small roasting tin. Prick the skin all over, to allow the fat to escape during the cooking process, and let a few sprigs of thyme fall over and around the duck. 
• Put in the preheated oven for 2 hours; the result will be crispy skin and tender meat falling off the bone.

• Remove the duck from the oven and place the legs on a carving plate to cool. Use two forks to shred the skin and meat from the bone and place in a bowl.
• Boil the kettle and fill a saucepan with enough water to cook your noodles, and add a pinch of salt. Drop your noodles into the water and cook as per packet instructions (eg 5 minutes for udon noodles)
• Meanwhile, heat a tablespoon of sunflower oil in a frying pan and fry the chilli, spring onion and ginger. 
• Add a splash of soy sauce and the rice wine vinegar and allow the ingredients to simmer in the pan for a couple of minutes. 
• Add the shredded duck and a splash more soy sauce to coat.

• Stir for a minute or so and then once your noodles are cooked, drain and drop them into the pan. Stir everything together and at this stage you can add more soy sauce to your taste. 
• Once everything is mixed together evenly, remove from heat and serve with a crisp mixed leaf salad.