Hung oven vs. closed oven: Beijing’s two ways to roast a duck

The duck is shaped long before it meets fire. Only Beijing stuffed ducks are used. After slaughter, plucking and cleaning, air is pumped under the skin to separate skin from flesh and round out the bird. Boiling water is poured over the skin to tighten it — the thinner and glossier it gets, the better it roasts. A thin brush of sugar syrup follows, for the jujube-red colour, and then the duck hangs to dry until the skin is tight as paper.

Before it goes in, a ladle of boiling water is poured into the cavity. It is the step most easily overlooked: the duck is roasted from outside and cooked from inside, which keeps the meat tender under the crisp skin. We call it “roasted outside, cooked inside” (外烤内煮).

A hung oven has no door. It is a brick oven open at the front, burning smokeless fruitwood such as jujube, pear or apple, with the ducks hung on hooks inside, facing the flame. The duck master moves and turns the birds with a long pole until the skin is glossy jujube-red. English Wikipedia says one hung oven can roast up to twenty ducks at once.

How long and how hot depends on whom you ask. English Wikipedia gives about 270°C for 30–40 minutes; a Beijing Dongcheng District government page says about 40 minutes; a Guokr article says Quanjude once roasted at 230–240°C for 50 minutes and now about 250°C for 60–70; our printed menu says around 50 minutes. We will not pretend to settle it — the accounts agree only that it is somewhere between 30 and 70 minutes.

What matters is what it does to the duck. Open flame hits the body directly, the fat under the skin melts as it roasts, and the skin turns brittle. The crack you hear when you bite the first slice of skin, dipped in sugar, comes from here.

The closed oven thinks the opposite way. According to English Wikipedia it is a brick oven with a metal grate, first heated by burning sorghum stalks at the bottom. When the fire has burned down, the duck goes in and is cooked slowly by the convection of the oven’s heat, rather than by flame reaching the bird.

It is much gentler on the duck. The same source says closed-oven duck keeps its meat well bound to the fat under the skin, so it is juicy and tender. Think of it this way: the closed-oven duck is slowly braised in trapped heat, while the hung-oven duck is roasted in moving flame.

In short, the hung oven chases skin that shatters, and the closed oven chases meat that is soft and rich. Neither is right or wrong: they are two answers to the same question — how does a scalded, syruped, dried duck taste best? Ours is the hung oven, carved at the table. To taste what that means, don’t roll anything at first: eat the first slice of skin alone with a little sugar, then a slice of meat on its own. You will find the meat is still tender — the work of that ladle of water in the cavity.

If you are curious about the closed oven too, start in Beijing around Qianmen: the first Bianyifang is said to have stood in Xianyukou, not far from the gate.