Duck Gizzards in Red Wine Sauce

I was doing my grocery-shopping at one of those neighbourhood NTUCs when I chanced upon chilled duck gizzards. They were in a packet and it was about 300g. Well, I’ve never tried cooking them before so I thought I’ll give it a go.

They weren’t very expensive, I think a packet cost me about $3 plus? I looked for recipes on the Internet and came across one with a mushroom red wine sauce. It was fairly easy to make and the decisive factor was that I happen to have a bottle of red wine that I got at work 2 years ago. It was one of those cheap wines so I thought one day, I’ll use it for cooking. Well, that one day has finally come.

I used:

300g duck gizzards

sliced mushrooms (I used Swiss Brown)

carrots, sliced into thin strips (I used a skin peeler to create those thin strips)

chopped garlic

red wine

The duck gizzards have already been cleaned and trimmed off their…unnecessary stuff. Hahaha, don’t know what to call them. They actually look like this in the packet and I had to cut off the excess “skin” and silver membrane. I only wanted the red meat hidden beneath all of those.  I think the cleaning of the gizzards was the hardest part of this dish.

- Heat pan and place in preferred cooking fat (I used lard for this recipe from the rendered lard I have but you can use butter or coconut oil for frying)

- Throw in garlic and stir fry until slightly golden

- Add carrots and mushrooms and stir fry lightly

- Place in duck gizzards

- Add red wine to cover just the bottom of the ingredients

- Add a pinch of salt and generous amount of black pepper

- Mix ingredients well, cover and leave to simmer on low heat for about 10-15 minutes

Simmering

Obviously, I had added way too much red wine. I poured free flow and when I tasted it, I knew it was too much. I then tried to salvage it by adding some balsamic vinegar.

Why balsamic vinegar? Because I was rummaging through the cabinet, thinking what could I add that would alleviate the strong wine taste and I saw the bottle of balsamic vinegar. Without second thought, I added a tablespoon into the pan and tasted it again. Better! I added another generous table spoon and left it to simmer.

A word of caution, don’t leave it simmering for too long or the gizzards will overcook and become hard. How do I know? Because that was just what I did, lol. o_O

I think I left it for about 25 minutes and the gizzards sucked. They were tough and a tad chewy. On a brighter note, the mushrooms & carrots in red wine sauce were delicious. The carrots added a pleasant sweetness to the sauce, so it was sweet & savoury…very comforting. Hahaha.

I paired the finished gizzards with some green salad (I used baby spinach and wild rocket). The extra red wine sauce makes a fabulous dressing for the salad too!