Sous Vide Duck Breast: Time and Temperature

Sous vide duck breast cooks at 135°F (57.2°C) for medium-rare: rosy pink, tender and juicy. A breast 1 in (2.5 cm) thick needs a minimum of 3 hours 15 minutes, with a best window of 3 hours 15 minutes to 4 hours 15 minutes and a maximum of 4 hours 15 minutes.

After the bath, the scored skin is seared skin side down to render the fat and crisp the skin.

Temperature and doneness

The calculator has two settings for duck breast.

How the two compare:

• 135°F (57.2°C), the default, is medium-rare. The meat is rosy pink, tender and juicy.
• 140°F (60°C) is medium. The meat is light pink and firmer.

Duck breast is darker than chicken breast. USDA FSIS explains in Duck and Goose from Farm to Table that ducks and geese are birds of flight, so their breast meat is darker than chicken and turkey breast. Myoglobin, the protein that holds oxygen in the muscle, gives the meat its darker color.

Both settings keep the meat pink. That is a different range from chicken breast, which the calculator cooks at 140°F to 160°F (60°C to 71.1°C), and from a rolled turkey breast, which it cooks at 140°F to 152°F (60°C to 66.7°C). Lamb chops, another meat served pink, have a medium-rare default of 131°F (55°C). Duck starts higher because the calculator requires poultry to be pasteurized at the minimum time. The doneness guide explains how doneness levels map to temperature, and the chicken temperature chart sets duck breast beside the other poultry defaults.

The calculator's notes mention that Serious Eats cooks duck breast at 130°F (54.4°C). The calculator does not offer that temperature. It is below the lowest temperature in the poultry pasteurization table this calculator uses, which starts at 134.5°F (57°C), and the calculator treats no bath of 130°F (54.4°C) or below as pasteurizing.

Time by thickness

Measure the breast through its thickest part. The times below are for duck straight from the refrigerator.

At this temperature, pasteurization sets the time. The center of a 1 in (2.5 cm) breast reaches the bath temperature in 1 hour 15 minutes, but the breast is not pasteurized until 3 hours 15 minutes. A thin 0.5 in (1.3 cm) breast heats through in 30 minutes and still needs 2 hours 30 minutes.

That is longer than some recipes print. Anova has one duck breast recipe at 135°F (57.2°C) for 2 hours and another at 135°F (57.2°C) for 3 hours 30 minutes, neither tied to a thickness. The calculator's minimum is the time for the center of a breast of your thickness to pasteurize, and it grows with thickness because a thicker piece takes longer to heat through. Douglas Baldwin's guide to sous vide cooking gives a rule of thumb that doubling the thickness increases the heating time about four fold. The calculator's duck table rises far less steeply, because pasteurization and not heating sets these minimums: 4 hours 30 minutes at 1.5 in (3.8 cm) against 3 hours at 0.75 in (1.9 cm).

Medium is the faster setting because a higher temperature pasteurizes faster.

A 1 in (2.5 cm) breast needs 2 hours at 140°F (60°C), which is 1 hour 15 minutes less than at 135°F (57.2°C).

For a thickness between the rows, enter it in the calculator.

The maximum time

The maximum is a texture limit. The duck is pasteurized at the minimum time, and extra time makes it softer but does not make it unsafe.

At 135°F (57.2°C) the maximum is 4 hours for breasts up to 0.75 in (1.9 cm) thick. From 1 in (2.5 cm) up, the minimum is already close to or past the usual 4 hour texture limit, so the maximum is the minimum plus 1 hour. Expect a softer texture than a thinner breast would have.

At 140°F (60°C) the maximum is 4 hours for breasts up to 1.25 in (3.2 cm) thick.

How to sous vide duck breast

1. Heat the bath to 135°F (57.2°C) for medium-rare or 140°F (60°C) for medium.
2. Score the skin. Cut a crosshatch pattern across the skin with a sharp knife.
3. Season with salt.
4. Bag in a single layer. Use a vacuum sealer, or a zipper-lock freezer bag sealed with the water displacement method.
5. Cook for at least the minimum time. Keep the bags fully under the water and not overlapping. Crowded or overlapping bags heat more slowly, and the times shown will be too short for them.
6. Dry the breast. Lift it out of the bag and pat it dry with paper towels.
7. Sear skin side down over medium heat to render the fat and crisp the skin.
8. Slice and serve.

Rendering and crisping the skin

Duck skin sits on a layer of fat. The FSIS page describes it as a fat layer beneath the skin that keeps the bird buoyant.

The bath is too cool to brown or crisp skin. Baldwin's guide puts good browning at around 300°F (149°C), far above the bath temperature. The pan does that work after the bath and renders the fat at the same time.

The calculator's method is to score the skin, then sear skin side down over medium heat after the bath. The Anova recipes show two ways to do it:

• Sear after the bath. The duck a l'orange recipe scores the skin after cooking, heats a skillet over medium-high heat and sears the breast skin side down for about 5 minutes, until deeply browned.
• Sear before and after. The crispy Chinese duck breast recipe scores and sears the skin before bagging, about 5 minutes over medium heat in a cast iron skillet. After the bath it sears the breast again over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes, until the skin is golden brown and crisp.

The duck a l'orange recipe removes the rendered fat from the pan before it makes the sauce.

Duck breast from frozen

Frozen duck breasts can go straight into the bath. At 135°F (57.2°C) the frozen minimums are:

• 0.5 in (1.3 cm): 2 hours 45 minutes
• 0.75 in (1.9 cm): 3 hours 30 minutes
• 1 in (2.5 cm): 4 hours 15 minutes
• 1.25 in (3.2 cm): 5 hours
• 1.5 in (3.8 cm): 6 hours
• 1.75 in (4.4 cm): 7 hours 15 minutes

At 140°F (60°C) a frozen 1 in (2.5 cm) breast needs 3 hours.

In the calculator, the heat-through time from frozen is 1.55 times the thawed time, and the pasteurization time is longer by a matching allowance. That allowance is the calculator's own rule. No published table covers pasteurizing from frozen.

The guide to cooking from frozen covers other foods.

Safety and the USDA tables

FoodSafety.gov lists 165°F (73.9°C) as the safe minimum internal temperature for chicken, turkey and other poultry. The FSIS duck page gives the same figure for whole duck and goose and for pieces, including the breast.

That figure is a single reading with no hold time. A lower bath temperature pasteurizes the duck only because the duck is held for the full minimum time shown.

The calculator draws its poultry times from two sources: Table 4.1 in Baldwin's guide, which starts at 134.5°F (57°C), and the USDA FSIS poultry time and temperature tables, which start at 136°F (57.8°C).

The 135°F (57.2°C) setting is below 136°F (57.8°C), the lowest temperature in the USDA tables. There is no USDA equivalent for this setting. The time comes from Baldwin's poultry pasteurization table alone.

The 140°F (60°C) setting is inside the range of both. If you want a setting that the USDA tables also cover, use medium.

Baldwin's table gives times for at least a one million to one reduction in Listeria and a ten million to one reduction in Salmonella, for poultry that starts at 41°F (5°C). The explainer on whether sous vide is safe covers how pasteurization by time and temperature works.

Common problems

The skin is soft or fatty. The sear was too short to render the fat under the skin. Score the skin and sear skin side down over medium heat until it is deeply browned.

The meat overcooked during the sear. The pan heats the meat as well as the skin. Chilling the cooked breast in an ice bath for 5 to 10 minutes first, as Logsdon's guide does, gives the fat more time to render.

The meat is softer than expected. A thick breast at 135°F (57.2°C) has a long minimum, and the long cook softens the texture. The 140°F (60°C) setting is shorter.

The bag floats. Any part of the breast above the water heats more slowly than the times assume. Push the air out again and hold the bag under.